


Jade Harley and the Rise of the Underworld

by oxfordRoulette



Series: Underworld [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gore, Linguistics, Mild Sexual Content, Original Mythology, Texas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2017-12-22 07:17:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/pseuds/oxfordRoulette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You meet an ancient boy in a club dusty from desert sands and get dragged into his odd, odd undeath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The One-Night Stand

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Джейд Харли и Гнев Тёмного Мира (Jade Harley and the Rise of the Underworld by oxfordRoulette)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4101400) by [Mr_Scapegrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Scapegrace/pseuds/Mr_Scapegrace)



> Something light and short and bizarre, and especially quick to write... just what I like. I hope you enjoy.

You wake up in someone else's house.

You remember the things Grandpa taught you when looking at an unfamiliar ceiling: don't panic, observe your surroundings, and check for condoms in the trash can to make sure things went safely. If there isn't anything the trashcan, you're supposed to tie down the victim and interrogate them about their sexual history with whatever ropes, twist ties, or shreds of toilet paper you can find in the room. Grandpa never instructed you to go down to the drugstore and maaaaayyybbbee get something to stop you from getting preggers, but you figured he wouldn't know since you're pretty sure he batted for the other team. You wonder what sort of things you can utilize for your interrogation when worst comes to worst. Maybe they're some douchebag who keeps butterfly knives around and doesn't know how to use them? Perhaps you can yank the sheets off the bed without them noticing and tie up their wrists? The possibilities are endless!

You count: "calmly thinking of interrogation methods" as a satisfactory qualification for the first step. Don't Panic. Check.

Alright, second step. Observe your surroundings.

You are lying flat on your back, glasses still on through some miracle, staring up at a very white, very blank ceiling. No scientific deductions to be made there, although you're glad you didn't wake up in the middle of the street. You feel the cool breeze from the morning air and you turn your head to your left, which hurts. Ow, okay, so you've got a hangover. Great. The view to your left reveals something rather important: you're not in a house, you're in a motel room. You can see a door into a hallway, a armchair, and a really shittily made dresser which is balanced on a phonebook. The edge of the top of it looks pretty sharp and you think you might have cut your hand on it, but a quick glance towards the aforementioned part resting on top of the blanket reveals there is no wound. Good to know, you suppose. The window's open and you can see a beautiful blue morning sky. It doesn't look like you're on the first or second floor, so if you need to make a fast getaway, you probably can't jump out of it.

Your clothes are scattered across the floor, but you don't spot your panties, which you think you're still wearing. You think. The other clothes on the floor are really big, baggy black things. Shit, you hope you didn't sleep with a juggalo or something. Who wears all black in this sort of heat?

You turn your head the other way, carefully adjusting for the pangs of your hangover. On your right, you see the sleeping form of the guy you totally boned last night.

He's... interesting. Yeah. Jade Harley, you picked a winner. The tattoos are what you see first. His back and arms are covered with strong, black lines, drawing jagged edges along very particular spots. Some of the zig-zags have smaller mirrored lines running alongside them, and some are punctuated with little dots and swirls. You can't see how far down they go, since the sheet is covering his nethers. It's got to mean something, but its not much like any art style you're familiar with.

He's facing away from you, his shoulders heaving with breath from a deep sleep. He's got a large mop of black hair, and while it's probably ruffled from being in bed, his hairstyle just looks like it would be really messy even if he brushed it. His skin is the shade of this really nice dark cherry dresser you used to have in your bedroom. Probably Mexican. You hope you got some Spanish practice in last night, you've been meaning to brush up on that. His waist curves like the kind of stereotypical girl figure you see in women's magazines at the gas station, and you push away the strong urge to start tickling his ribs. You see a bit of his earlobe behind a particularly pointy tuft of hair, and he looks like he has really big... what are they called? Gauges?

You think that's enough for step two. Besides, he's pretty scrawny in comparison to you, and you could probably break him in half with one arm if he started threatening you! Observe Surroundings. Check.

Step Three: Did you have safe sex?

This one is the most important one. You sit up like the monster in Frankenstein, partly for fun, partly because your head hurts a lot and you reaaaallllyyy don't want to move. And yes, your panties are most definitely on! Bra: not so much. It's way over by the door, too. Did that come off first or something? How? And more importantly, why?

You swing your legs over the edge of the bed (slooowwwwllyyy) and start to stand up.

"Jade?"

Aw, his voice sounds kind of cute! It's kind of quiet and husky, like he just quit smoking after thirty years of sheer lung cancer. You feel guilty you don't remember his name, but maybe you can prevent bad blood between you both by speaking in his native language. You turn to him (slowwwwllyyyyy) and try to remember your Spanish through the fog of a hangover.

"¿Buenos días, cómo estás?"

"Wow, are you fucking shitting me? Just because I've got skin darker than your average cover model doesn't mean I'm some kind of Spaniard, you racist punk."

Okay, you take it back, his voice isn't cute at all. It still sounds like lung cancer, but rubbed against a cheese grater and amplified by a megaphone. Your ears ring a little bit. You also feel maybe a little bit guilty for fucking that assumption up. You really need to stop that kind of stuff.

Also, who uses the term "Spaniard?" What the hell?

"Sorry, I was being dumb. Um, could you lower the volume a bit, though? I kind of have a hangover."

"Sure, whatever, I'm going back to sleep."

He rolls over. You forgot to get a good look at his face. What if he's got those weird tattoos all over his face? Actually, you probably wouldn't care too much but it would make for a good story to tell around the campfire.

Now you have finally arrived at Step Three. You stand up and shuffle around the room a bit, looking for any discarded birth control packages, wrappers, or the (probably gross and dried up by now) condom. You don't see one on the floor anywhere, so you look for a garbage bin. You hear a shifting on the bed and the beginnings of a whine.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He's TRYING to keep the volume down, you can tell, but it sounds like he's speaking through a wad of wet rags instead of actually lowering his voice. You look, and no, he is not speaking through some kind of barrier, he just talks like that. He doesn't have any of the strange tattoos on his face. He's actually pretty cute, a square jaw and flat nose with the remnants of a baby face, and just the little twinges of a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm looking for a condom."

"Oh, we didn't use one."

You didn't WHAT? Oh shit, how could you be so stupid!? Ugh, where even are you in your cycle? You smack your head in disbelief, but waste no more time in remembering Grandpa's advice. You make a quick scan of the room, looking for any tools to utilize in your interrogation, but decide he's small enough for you to just take on by yourself.

You hurdle yourself onto the bed, ignoring the screams of your head and the screams of your mysterious suitor, and roll him flat on his back with practiced force. You pin both his wrists above his head with your right hand and press on his neck with your left, then clamp your thighs down on his hips. This guy isn't moving ANYWHERE.

"Tell me your sexual history!!! This includes partners and any STIs you have!!!!"

"Holy shit! This is an infringement on my personal rights!" he turned the volume back up to eleven. Ow ow ow. "I demand a lawyer to read me the Magna Carta!"

"Um, I don't think that's the right documen..." this is no time for foolish debates! You clamp down on his neck a little harder. "Shut up, fucker!!!! Start listing!"

"Give me one, solid reason for me to-gak- okay-okay. Uh. Partners: A lot. STIs: None."

What a wise-ass response, that shrew! "How many partners!!!"

"Shit, I don't know, I don't fucking count."

Just a little push.

"Gaaaakk- Okay, okay, let me just calm down for one brief second."

You give him the benefit of the doubt, let him start counting up. You relax your grip a bit and watch his eyes start moving back and forth with thought. You watch the fingers on his hands retract and extend with counting, your hand poised to clamp down at any time if he starts getting testy. You wait for about thirty seconds, with no sign of him slowing down.

"Ummm, you can't have had that many. And if you did there is literally no way you wouldn't have an STI."

"Shut up, I'm counting."

You look at him with your eyebrows furrowed, in what you hope is the most disapproving look you can muster.

He sighs, the bones of his shoulders shuddering under his skin. "Weren't you the one that wanted to know how many people I've slept with?"

"Yeah, but now I'm just bored!"

"Now you got me curious as all hell so don't interrupt me!"

"How old are you, anyway?"

He stares at you like you just ran over a deer. "You mean... You don't remember?"

Oh gosh, are his eyes beginning to water? He doesn't look dangerous at all when he's about to cry. "Not really?"

"Do you... even remember my name?"

Eridan? No, that was the one that tried to hit on you earlier. Tavros? No, that was the last guy. You put on your puppy dog eyes. "No? I'm sorry?"

His mouth purses together and his thick eyebrows close in rapidly and he looks absolutely destroyed. The puppy eyes appear to have failed on this one. You feel really bad so you release the grip on his neck a little, rolling your hand down to his chest. Maybe you should get off him? You unhook your legs and scuttle back to your side of the bed, lying down next to him with as much care as possible. He flips onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. He screams into it, all dramatic-y, like something you see on the telemundo novelas (which you watch even though you can't understand a goddamn lick of it).

"I can't believe you forgot my name," says the boy, still loud through like, two layers of shitty motel pillow foam. "It's like I've been stabbed in the back, betrayed, left to die on the side of the road as a car runs over my corpse and truckers pull over to fuck me in the asshole."

"That's... not at all what it's like." you say. This guy is reaaaallyyy weird. Kind of reminds you of your ex-boyfriend except louder and the ironic metaphors are straight from the heart. So not at all like your ex. You gotta get out of here after you get more information about his STI's. "Besides, that's kind of a weird overreaction for a one night stand you know!"

He picks his head up from his pillow next and glares at you. Not only are his eyebrows pushing down, the gigantic bags that take up like half his face are pushing back up, narrowing his eyes into really intimidating coin slots. Or, they would be intimidating if he didn't look like he was about to throw a temper tantrum. "You... Really... Can't remember? Anything?"

Maybe you should throw the guy a bone. Start remembering from the beginning?

"Hold on a sec," you say. "I'll try thinking."

You close your eyes.


	2. A Weird Party Trick

It was your third night in Texas, and your second night as a single woman on the prowl. You drove down south with just your bike, some clothes, and a credit card with the ultimate goal of breaking up with your long distance boyfriend you'd had since the end of high school. It didn't go as bad as you thought it would, the tears from that relationship had dried up long ago and it ended up being kind of a mutual thing. When you left his apartment, rubbing your arm and looking at the dirt on the sidewalk, you went through an epiphany. You were a strong, independent woman, and you could do whatever the fuck you wanted to! Texas didn't have to be all blues and breakups, you could have some fun in the majestic southern reaches! Find some guys (or ladies!) to dick around with, dance your heart out, and maybe sleep with somebody who didn't cry after every orgasm.

The first night was nothing special, you meandered around some group of people and found a boy with a deflated mohawk. You didn't spend the night though because he had some weird puppy dog crush on you and you felt pretty objectified.

Your second night was last night. You left your bike in a parking garage somewhere (oh gosh you hope it's still there) and wandered into the nearest nightclub you saw. The inside was kind of grodey, all sandy even though it was point blank in the middle of the city, and absolutely everything was painted black. There wasn't even a theme or anything, it was just a big concrete dance floor with a ton of multicolored lighting which only seemed to make the place darker. It was pretty crowded, but you managed to find the bar right away. That night was a night to get completely and utterly wasted, and you were going to get started immediately. 

You drank a few beers, taking a break to kick some dude in the shin when he said girls should only have fruity things, and made your way to the dance floor when you felt tipsy enough to begin the fun! 

You got down with your bad self in the midst of a group of single girls, bumped chests with a cutie in a tube top, and ground against some tall burly guy who just looked really confused. You were having fun, but knew you could be having MORE fun if you were drunker, so you went back to the bar to get another few drinks.

Oh! This is the part when you met the guy in bed next to you right now. This memory appears to finally be getting somewhere. 

You were starting to feel it, your head clouding over with that particular curtain of drunkenness, and you grabbed whatever you were drinking at the time and shuffled closer to the dance floor so you could watch some weird looking cage dancers. It was somewhere in that time span when you bumped into Your Mysterious Suitor. 

Your shoulder slammed against his chest. You can't recall if it was your fault or his, but you must have angled your hand just right or something because your drink sloshed out of the top and splattered on his hoodie, which he had zipped up in the middle of a freaking nightclub.

He said something like "Watch it, asshole!" or "Goddammit, where's my Tide to Go pen, did I check it at the door?" or maybe "This was my favorite fucking sweatshirt, I got it at the only thriftstore in town that didn't birth itself from a dumpster's asshole." He definitely said at least one of those. Maybe all of them.

You felt bad about it (even though the guy was being pretty rude) and you were running on funds from the bank account of "Jade Harley's Massive Inheritance" so you offered to buy him a drink as an apology.

He agreed with some prodding, which might have been actual, physical prodding as opposed to the kind of prodding you do with words, and you both found your way to the bar.

Where you sat for the rest of the night.

Did you really not ever go out to the dance floor? Jeez, what did you even do sitting there for like, three hours? This is the part when things get really hard to remember, since by that time you had passed your tipping point and seesawed it into drunkenville.

His voice was just the right volume to carry over the noise of the crowd. In retrospect, you should have expected the guy would be really loud if he sounded normal in a room full of screaming people and dubstep. He told you all sorts of things, and you told him lots too, but you can only remember bits and pieces of your conversation. He told you he lost his job a while ago, he lives an hour north of here, and was just kind of bumming around for a few days or so in a slew of depression. You told him you dumped your boyfriend of five years two days ago, you ride a Harley (here he said "Harley on a Harley? Now that's just fucking ridiculous") and you majored in physics and chemistry but you might want to go back to school to get a biology degree. You argued about all sorts of things with him, but you can only remember bits and pieces of three of the topics: how to efficiently skin a coyote, laws about motorcycle helmets in Texas, and how to properly drink pulque. You didn't really know what pulque was but you argued anyway for the fun of it, then tried to order it just to see the blank stare of the bartender. You and Your Mysterious Suitor both laughed a lot at that trick.

When you got bored of talking, he told you all sorts of stories about his Central American history course he was taking at the community college. Or wait, did he already take the course? Or maybe they were stories from his grandpa or something? You don't quite remember, but you had a lot of fun listening to them.

And there was one point when you couldn't hear his words over the white noise and music so you moved yourself onto his lap. He was really, really warm, heating you up as you pressed your hands against his shoulders and rested your head on the crook of his neck. He got kind of embarrassed, his palms shaking when he rubbed your back with uncertain touches. But he kept talking, telling you all sorts of stories and things that you felt like you shouldn't be hearing, but were just irresistible to you. Ugh, you wish you could remember what he said. You'll have to ask him if you ever remember his name. 

The bar stool spun a bit from the force of two people sitting on it and you felt a little sick, so you asked to leave with him. You didn't wait for him to agree and you hopped off, holding his warm hand and dragging him through the crowd.

This is where things get really foggy, like you're driving through clouds and your high beams are on. You think you... walked to this motel where the guy had a room. At least you hope you walked, drunken motorcycle driving could not have possibly ended well if that happened. 

You barely shut the door before you started to unzip his jacket, kissing his heated cheeks while struggling with your own hopelessly inept motor skills. You both somehow ended up undressed and flat on the bed, his soft weight pressing into your own skin. Anything between those two points is a blur of motion and drunken haze.

Usually you like to be on top and ride that dick into next Tuesday, but you didn't flip him over last night. Why not? Were you just too lazy and drunk to push him and claim your dominant position as queen of the dude loins?

No, no that's not right. You kept him there because he put his face right up against your ear and kept telling you those stories. He told them to you in the same quiet voice he used when he woke up this morning, all husky and weary from the world and absolutely enthralling. Each vowel was a crackling song resonating in your core, each consonant pricked the back of your head and sent static through your neck, all of it clear even through the fog of alcohol. His hands were quivering when he trailed them across your chest to touch you, applying accents to each pulse of your bodies.

You usually scream a lot during these kinds of things, because what kind of sexy time is a sexy time without a lot of yelling and whooping? Not a good time, that's for sure. But last night you don't think you yelled at all, you just pitifully whimpered something each time his lips brushed your earlobe. Even though you're pretty sure you were physically connected to the guy by that time, the only thing that flowed through your head was the sound of his hushed voice, speaking with irregular rhythm and sharp with timbre.

But what did he say, exactly? You can't pick out one single thing throughout that whole debacle, but you remember the feeling. He spoke unsure, at first, words punctuated with random spurts of strong volume and pulled out of his mouth like dusty china. But you inched your face closer, craving for more, and his voice quavered with uncertainty but remained true, putting something deep and purely poetic into your dreamy head. He spoke faster, his particular flow unlike any conversation you've had, words stood out with thrusting punctuation and electric vocabulary, although you can't recall if he was even speaking English. He got louder, your ear became sensitive but you pushed closer to his lips and he smothered you in sound, his diction delivering something particularly satisfying to your eardrum in your clearest memory. You came in spasms, dependent entirely on the speech which rolled from his tongue, and you yelled out his name.

What was it??? You can't remember it for the life of you. It was more than one syllable, for sure, but you have no idea what letter it started with, even.

Oh, you DEFINITELY cut the back of your hand on that shitty dresser during a particularly enthusiastic flail of your arm. Maybe that's what made you yell? You remember him sitting up, taking your hand in his and holding it to his lips while you still shook with the echo of his voice in your ears and then... Uh, then... Then... You can't remember.

Well, the cut is gone now. The back of your hand is perfectly clear, and you check the other hand just to make sure you didn't remember it wrong. Still no cut.

"What happened to the cut on my hand?" you ask, facing the boy who still remains nameless and still remains face down in the pillow. How is he even breathing?

"That's not my name," comes the muffled reply. "That is actually a completely different topic, although you might not be able to understand that since it looks like you lost a few dozen brain nerves in that flashback you just had."

What a dumbass! This doesn't seem like the guy you banged last night. But he does seem like the rude guy you ran into in the bar. "How do you know I had a flashback?"

"Oh I dunno, maybe the way your eyes kind of glazed over? Or your mouth just hung open for a while exposing your despicably cute front teeth?"

"You weren't even looking! Your head was in that pillow the whole time!"

"Whatever you say, princess asstrumpet." He rolls onto his side, away from you, and digs in the crack formed between the wall and the bed. "I was just fucking with you anyway, I don't think I even told you my name. It's a really bizarre name anyway, not worthy to grace your lips."

"You totally did tell me! I'm pretty sure I said it last night."

He pulls out your top from the mysterious under reaches of the bed. "This is yours." He tosses it on your face. It jars your glasses and you readjust them. You catch him trying to remember something, but then he shakes himself out of it. "Even if I did tell you my name, it is completely unpronounceable by ignoramuses like you. It takes a special kind of person to even speak of and grovel before my glorious shining identifier." He digs out his boxers-- grey and solid print. 

"Get off your high horse! And while you're getting down, maybe take that big stick out of your ass!"

"Wow, those are some fucking original insults right there, I've never heard those sayings before." He sits up, ruffling his hair in a sad attempt to make it presentable. "I hereby ban you from responding to any further witty commentary by myself. You'll only tarnish its good name."

"Okay, I'll take that deal. Too bad nothing you have said qualifies as witty!!!!" You sit up too, folding your arms and sticking out your tongue. He ignores you, standing up to get dressed. You mentally high five yourself when you see his ass. Guy's got a really nice ass.

"What'd you say to me last night?"

"Huh?" he looks for his pants in the pile of clothing. He tosses your bra at you.

You catch it. "You said all sorts of things to me. Whatever it was it got me pretty hot and bothered! I want to know what you said." You put your arms under the straps and hook it in the back.

"I dunno. Stuff. Mind your own business." He shimmies his pants up to his waist then pulls them tight with a really old looking leather belt.

"Um, it is my business! You said it to me, after all!" Shirt goes on.

He throws your jeans at you then finds his own tshirt, a tacky unisex black thing that says 'got jesus?' on it. "Look, Jade, whose name I clearly remember, I'll tell you exactly what I told you when I made you so elegantly orgasm for like a fucking hour... if you give me a ride home."

"You live north of here, right?" you sit on the edge of the bed and stick your ankles in the jean holes. "I suppose I could... I guess I could see a bit more of Texas on my Southtactular Motorcycle Roadtrip Extravaganza. I don't see why you could just tell me now..."

"It's kind of a long story, my delicate feminine sensibilities are offended that you forgot, and I have about ten minutes to renew my motel stay and I'm out of money, so we wait until later."

He holds up the stained hoodie, grimacing, then tucks it under his arm. You meet him by the doorway, fully dressed. You fold your arms and stand in between him and the exit, grinning when he tells you to move. 

"Tell me your name!" you say. He's about as tall as you, although you're pretty sure you're an inch taller, but that might be the shoes. He straightens his back to answer, and oh wait, never mind, looks like he's at least half a head bigger. Funny, you thought he was so small when lying next to you.

"Call me Karkat."

"Karkat. Weird name. Also, take that, I can totally pronounce it, which proves I am not an 'ignoramus.'"

"That's what you think. Now lets get out of this dump."

"I couldn't agree more."


	3. Throwback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suggest you look at the archive warning if you haven't yet. I also added a tag for "Gore."

You eventually find the parking garage where you stored your bike, and she appears to be in pristine condition! Yay! Neon green custom paint job looks free of scratches, your gigantic saddle bags have everything in them, and no random parts were taken. Although you're not sure why it's still there. After all, who wouldn't want to steal a gargantuan CVO from the early 90's? If you saw this baby in the parking lot you would immediately throw your morals aside and hot wire that shit without a care in the world.

"I still can't fucking believe that your name is Harley and you ride a Harley."

"Shut up!" you laugh. "I consider it my other half, you know."

"Jade, if you confess to me right now that you married a motorcycle and took its last name, I am going to have to seriously consider revoking your one night stand relationship privileges."

"And what privileges are those?" You open the storage behind the passenger seat for helmets.

"Maybe the privilege to exchange phone numbers? Fuck, I dunno. I didn't think this one through."

You pick up your own helmet, black visor and black shell with green flame decals. "I'll think about it." you say. Do you really want to see this guy again? On one hand, he's kind of entertaining, but on the other hand, you have had enough long distance relationships to last you another fifteen years. You don't see the other helmet in the compartment, and it definitely doesn't fit in the saddlebags. You check anyway, digging out your leathers while you're there.

"Shit. I must have left the other helmet at home. You can have mine." You hold it out for him.

"Uh, no. You take it, I don't want it."

"Do you have health insurance?"

"No. What does that-"

"Texas law states it is illegal to forgo a helmet unless you have at least $10,000 worth of health insurance coverage. Which I do." You place it on his head. "So you have to take it! Otherwise you owe me $10,000 when we get pulled over."

He pushes it down onto his head and adjusts it. You can't see his face anymore. "I would rather have my fucking legendary tresses blow free in the wind, you know."

"Too bad! I would feel so guilty if we crashed and you kicked the bucket. I'd rather have something happen to me than to my motor guest." You put your jacket on. You really should get something printed on the back. Maybe a howling wolf? No, maybe like, six howling wolves! Yeah, that would be cool.

You have him hop up on the secondary seat and you take your place at the controls, right where you belong. You stick your key in the ignition and feel the rumble of the bike light up your life and soothe your hangover.

"Shit." Karkat says, snapping you out of the pre-drive ecstasy.

"What?"

"Your hair is going to hit me in the glass bug deflector isn't it?"

"It's called a visor. And yeah, probably. I can put it in a ponytail. Could you get me a rubber band out of the bag on your left?"

You wait for him to hand you a binder, holding out your hand while checking the gas gauge. You think you've got enough for an hour long highway trip. You feel a tug on your hair.

"Hey! What are you doing?" You try to turn around but he's got like, all of your hair in his hand.

"Putting your hair up, dumbass. Now stop twitching like a recently killed raccoon."

He takes his hand and smooths everything back, getting all the loose hairs which float around the top of your head. He threads your hair through the rubber band, pulling it back gently through each iteration of the loop, and giving it one final tug to tighten it. "See? Was that so hard? You need me to braid it or anything?"

"I- What? No? You know how to braid?"

"Of course I fucking do, I know like twenty different braiding styles, I'm a *man*." He said it like it was something that all men knew how to do. "I'll just put it in a bun then."

He pulls a loop of hair back through the band. You kick into drive mode, and maneuver yourself out of the parking lot. You wonder if he went to beauty school or something? Ha. That's a funny thought. Thinking of Karkat angrily smearing some pink lipstick on a poor test manikin is pretty hilarious.

The bike gets too loud to talk, but that doesn't stop Karkat anyway. He comments on EVERYTHING, even though you yell to him multiple times that you can't hear him at all. You catch bits and pieces of what he says, stuff like "All of these buildings look like heaps of shit painted gray and shaped into boxes. I'd rather just have like, six thousand miles of hideous dried out forest instead of city." or "Man, what do these farms even produce anyway? Spiky knife grass?" or "Did you see that tourist sign? Looks like someone needs to hire a brand spanking new copywriter."

You ignore him after the first twenty minutes, the city opening up into farmland and dry forested areas. Kind of boring to look at, but real easy to ride in. You like to zone out a bit when you're on roads like this (not too much zoning though! Safety first!) where there are few cagers and lots of open space for you and your bike. And Karkat, you guess.

Oh, you never found out about his STI count. You'll have to interrogate him for realsies when you drop him off. You keep a pair of handcuffs in the saddlebag just for that purpose, which you hope he didn't see when he got your hair tie. You wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, after all.

After that you gotta get something to prevent any babies from spawning in your lady bits. You don't know what kind of offspring you and Karkat would produce, but you probably don't want to meet them. He lives in a relatively small suburb, but you're pretty sure they'll have a drug store. You don't know much about the availability of the morning after pill in Texas, but you hope it's as easy to buy here as it is where you live.

Bleh, you never, ever, forget about birth control! How could you have messed up like that? You think he might have said something to you to convince you to not have him wear one, but what was it? He might have said something about "shooting blanks," but even so, that shouldn't have stopped you from slapping a rubber straight onto that D. He could have been lying, and just because he doesn't have any swimmers doesn't mean he isn't horribly diseased.

When did he even tell you that little "factoid?" You think it was around the time at the bar when he stopped calling you "Harley" and started calling you "Jade."

Hold on a sec. When did you tell him YOUR name? You are like, 99% positive you did not tell him your name, at least not by the time he started calling you by it.

"Karkat, how did you learn my name? Were you stalking me beforehand or something???"

"What? Can't hear you over the ungodly roar of this damn engine."

This guy is getting creepier every second. You are half tempted to pull over right now and demand he answer your questions or he wont be allowed to go home. But the ditch is deep and dirty and looks really hard to drive out of, even with your trusty old CVO. If you got stuck down there, you wouldn't be getting out for a long time. There isn't even a shoulder to pull onto, the road just kinda ends with a dirty mini-valley.

You check your mirrors. Nothing to do now but drive, drive, drive. There are two large cargo trucks approaching you from the left lane, but you make eye contact with the lady driving the front one, so you're safe for now. They're both really close together, and you think it's a little dangerous for the second truck to be tailgating the first one like that. You're all going down a pretty shallow hill, so the trucks speed up and start to pass you. You fall behind the first one, aligning dead center with the white panel of the second truck as the hill falls back to a plane.

You see the right signal go off on both the trucks. Okay, there's no way the second guy doesn't see you, you're clearly in his mirrors, you'll just coast until they fall behind you. You see the front of the truck begin to move right.

The guy begins to change lanes.

He's going to merge into you.

You HAVE to avoid this truck.

You hear Karkat start to scream. But you've still got time to react.

Okay, split second option runthrough:

Option one: Drive into the ditch.

Um, no, hell no. There is no way in hell that you would be able to ride that out at this speed. At best, you would flip over, scratch up your motorcycle, and land in some mud avoiding major injury. At worst, everybody dies.

Option two: Slam on the breaks.

Better than option one, but just barely. You don't have to stop immediately, but you do have to stop pretty quickly, leading to a pretty big chance you'll flip over. And that concrete will not be good for your head. But chances are you'll be able to ride it out.

Option three: Speed way the fuck up and pass that motherfucker!

The first truck definitely sees you, and you can totally make it past the the headlights of the second truck before he crashes into you. This seems like the best option.

You kick it into overdrive and fucking floor it. You hear Karkat scream something derogatory just as you make it past the second truck. You give a little "yes" and start to match the speed of the first truck. But it dawns on you that you've made a terrible mistake.

You're not in the safety zone of the first truck, and she's moving over too.

She's blocking your path out, and the back of the truck is rapidly swinging towards you.

You break to the right, your bike getting as far over as possible before slowing. You try to stop it with all you've got, slowing without flipping, your wheels screeching against the pavement, hoping to heaven and back that you'll just scrape by next to and behind the second truck.

You're so close, you make it to the last 3/4ths of the truck before you hear the crunch of Karkat's leg against the metal, then feel your side splinter with blunt pain.

Your CVO loses control as your hands spasm, and you're hurdled under the truck, your bike spinning left and taking you with it. You hit the ground at eighty miles an hour, and for one, terrifying second, you feel the sharpest pain in your head. Like you just got trapped in one of those automatic sandpaper things and it was going at your brain. But then, just as quickly as it came, it goes away, and you feel rather calm as you skid to a stop on the road, your bike in a crumpled heap next to you and your eyes looking up at that beautiful, blue sky.

You hear the truck stop from far away and the door open. You also hear a scraping sound to your left, and hear Karkat's voice from somewhere over there.

"Oh, oh fuck. Oh fuck. Jade. Jade. No. Oh shit, no. No no no."

Well you're glad he's okay, at least. You wonder why he doesn't come in your field of vision. Actually, your field of vision looks unusually clear. Is something missing from it? Did your glasses fall off and is your sight healed?

You hear the trucker's voice. He's got a lisp. "Oh. My God. I... Killed her-"

You are CLEARLY alive! Your eyes are open, aren't they??? What is it with these dumbasses?

"Yeah, you fucking did! You had better get on that goddamn cellular and call 911."

Oh. You know why your field of vision is so clear. Because you're not looking through your eyes. You feel different somehow, less solid, and you try to move your field of vision towards Karkat.

You rotate, sort of, like the 360 degree movies at Disneyworld, and focus on Karkat. Oh. Fuck. He doesn't look so good either. He's got about half the helmet on, the half that didn't crack, and part of his face is skinned pretty bad. He's propped up on his one working elbow, right above your chest, and staring up at the trucker on the other side of you. He's got bones sticking out of all sorts of places on his left side, reminding you of some poorly butchered meat. You wonder how the hell he's still conscious and coherent, since one particularly nasty wound consists of his humerus sticking straight out of his left arm, which is just kind of floppy and bleeding everywhere.

There are tears streaming out of his eyes, but they didn't look like tears of pain. He looks like he's crying for you. Aw! How sweet!

You wonder if you can adjust your vision to look at yourself. You focus on moving up, then angling downwards.

Oh, eugh. You are so dead. There is stuff coming out of your head that you didn't even know was in there. Are you a ghost or something? You try flying around like you see in bad movies, but it looks like you can only move your head. Your ghost head. And you can only move it really, really slowly. You can't believe that this is an afterlife, is this even possible by the laws of physics? You are absolutely positive that this should not be possible, and you really want to find out more about what is happening to you.

You hear the trucker run away to get a cell phone or radio or something. You adjust your view to include Karkat. You'll have time for scientific questioning rituals later, assuming you'll be in this state for a while.

"Jade, Jade. I'm so sorry, shit. If I hadn't taken this fucking thing-" He shakes his head and the helmet falls off. "You'd still be here. I could have been in your place. I can't believe you fucking died for me."

Uh, you're pretty sure you didn't die FOR him, you just kind of died. But you don't want to break his heart so you don't try to tell him otherwise with a spooky message from the undead.

"Wait. Jade, you died *for* me."

Huh?

"And it's been a long, long, LONG time since someone's died *for* me."

His eyes relax, and you swear you see the hint of a smile grace his face. Okay, creepiness level has now raised to six thousand. You hear the beginnings of an emergency call from far away.

"Shut up." says Karkat. He says it quietly, like he's concentrating very hard on his words. He stares at your body. The trucker stops talking. "Tell them you sat on your phone or some shit."

You hear the trucker say, "Nevermind, I sat on my phone or some shit."

What. THE. FUCK.

Karkat sits up, a feat that should be completely impossible because of a few things. One: The wounds should have left him incredibly weak. Two: One leg is torn clean off from under the knee. Three: The other is holding on by only the barest hint of muscles. He even uses his floppy, bloody arm to push himself into a cross legged position. Or, as much of a cross legged position as he can get with one in a half legs missing. He grabs your body's shoulders with his good arm, then drags you onto his lap, causing some mystery chunks to fall out of your head and mouth. Yum-my.

"Somebody like you probably has some sort of miniature skinning and all purpose cutting tool on you, right?"

What does he mean, "somebody like you?" And hell yeah you have a pocket knife. But even if you were alive there is no way you would tell him that. He looks like he's about to play a really mean prank on somebody.

He checks your pockets for your pocket knife, which is where the knife is. Where else would it be? He flicks it open, staring at the blade. He does this all with his floppy, bleeding arm, and you have no clue how any of this is happening right now.

"Jade, you really need to sharpen your knives. If you were alive right now, this would hurt like fuck."

You have a terrible feeling that this situation is going to get ten times weirder ten times faster. He rams the knife right into your chest, causing your incredibly dead body to spasm like roadkill. You cringe anyway, even though you can't feel it. Or, wait, do you cringe? Do you have ghost expressions? Whatever, that's not important. What is important is that A GUY YOU BARELY KNOW IS STABBING YOUR DEAD BODY. 

Your mind is filled with vibrant images of incoherrent screaming. He begins to MOVE the knife, revealing that not only is this guy stabbing your dead body, he is also a complete psycho and is carving it up like ham. He saws a clean line through your shirt, bra, and muscle. Maybe a bit further, he looks like he's struggling with the cut, hitting bones and other Jade parts on the way. Add that to the list of oddities: he shouldn't be able to get enough force or even sharpness to saw through the stuff inside your chest. And even if he could, by some miracle, accomplish his task, he definitely does not have enough working muscles in that arm to even hold a knife. Also, this is really fucking gross. You'd throw up in his face if you could.

He finishes his work, a relatively clean backwards "J" cut looping through the center of your chest. It goes in really deep, but you're not sure how far. He takes his hand and-

Euugughhhhhghhhh, what really gets to you is the wet squish of your skin as it folds around his wrist. Karkat looks pretty grossed out too, his teeth exposed and lip curling as he digs for something. Hey, what are you doing, calmly observing his actions? He needs to get out of there RIGHT NOW and respect your personal space!!!

He twists his wrist and removes his hand, taking with it your heart. He holds it in his palm, thick fluids leaking from the crevices and trickling around his fingers.

"A very, very long time." he says, utterly entranced with what he's holding.

He closes his eyes and sighs, like trying to get rid of a headache. He opens his mouth incredibly wide and pops your heart in.

What.

He swallows it in one very audible gulp, somehow. It's almost cartoonish, if the cartoon you were talking about was some awful violent cannibal anime.

When he opens his eyes again, they're solid red.

He stands up, bones and muscles remaking themselves, blood pouring back into his pores, skin wrapping back around his legs and arms and face. He grows odd, spiral horns, wrapping up against themselves and twisting into rounded points off the top of his head. His tattoos glow with piercing radiance, shining away the black of his outfit and that ridiculous 'got jesus?' slogan. The ground and sky turn black, making him shine all the brighter. He looks at you. Not the dead you, the you you, and you are so

so

so

goddamn terrified.

"I'll come get you. I'll bring you back." he says. His words pierce the deepest part of you and you know he's not speaking any language you've heard of. "Just you fucking wait."

Two cold, dark hands grab you and pull you into the void.

 

You think you might have made a tiiiinnnyyy mistake by sleeping with this guy.


	4. Your Ex-Boyfriend Warned You About Stairs

It's dark.

Like, really dark. 

Darker than that one time you accidentally got lost in the Chuck E Cheese plastic tube maze and the staff turned the lights off on you.

You try to hold out your hands to feel around, see if there's anything to bump into, but it takes a good minute in a half of straining until you remember you don't have hands. Or any semblance of a body.

How the hell are you supposed to dig yourself out of this situation without a body?

Karkat said he would "come get you" but where ARE you? And what does "come get you" even mean if you're supposedly dead? Do you even want his help? That scene in the middle of a Texas highway has pretty much dissuaded you from ever going after the more "alternative subculture" looking dudes. From now on it's boring bros or broladies only. Or at least the ghosts of them. Can ghosts even bone? You hope so.

You give yourself a mental pat on the back for keeping it together. Grandpa has certainly trained you well! You wish you could give yourself an actual pat on the back, with actual hands, with actual skin and actual palm wrinkles. But you're going to have to wait for Karkat to get here, at least... unless if this is some kind of afterlife test. Hey, what if you don't even need Karkat to get you out? What if this is some mental puzzle you have to think your way out of? Like in all those bad Sci Fi books you sometimes read. Hmm, you'd better-

You hear a sound from the void, behind your field of vision. It's just a brief whisper, something really hushed and indistinguishable. Huh. It was so quiet, it had to have been something you imagined in the silence, but you're not taking any chances. You rotate your field 180 degrees. Or, you think it was 180 degrees, you don't have any reference and you didn't do so well in high school geometry.

There's nothing there. It occurs to you that you might have something covering your vision, like some sort of ghost blindfold. Or maybe not, maybe it really IS that dark. You start to feel a little claustrophobic.

You hear something again. Okay, you can pinpoint it this time. You adjust your field a bit to the right, and once again look into a solid black wall of nothing. Fuck. This is starting to get just a little creepy. Was the sound louder or was it your imagination? You really hope it was your imagination, or at least you hope you'll be able to find out the source of the sound pretty soon. The suspense is freaking you out!

You hear it for a third time. It's definitely louder, third time's the charm apparently, and it's from the same direction as the last one. At least the sound isn't always eternally behind you, or something, that would be like a really shitty scary movie plot point! And this time, you think you made out what kind of sound it was. It sounded like someone whispering a soft, short word.

Well, that's way less threatening. It's not like whoever it is is whispering "muurrddderrrr" or something. You hear it again, but this time you can discern more voices. There must be quite a lot of people saying something, in all sorts of different pitches. Were they all always whispering the same word? Or did they just join up and start whispering together like some kinda creepy group cheer?

The word is repeated, over and over, and as it crescendos you realize it's not English. It's smoother, rounder, with too many u's and a guttural click at the end to be the language you know. It kind of sounds like "suuuaaauuuKh" but not really. Gosh, this is really hard to transliterate in your head!

A pinprick appears in your vision, a clear white thing. That is definitely the point the sound is coming from. It looks like it's really far away, you wonder how loud the whispering actually is if the crowd is at that distance. 

It gets bigger, and bigger, and you can pick out shapes in the pinprick, but they just look like little tufts of clay. 

You start to get afraid. This definitely isn't Karkat. The Sci Fi books pop back into your brain, fueling your imagination with all sorts of bad things. What if it's some kind of big, soul eating monster? What if it wanders the ends of the universe and chomps down on the recently deceased who didn't figure out how to leave fast enough? Shit shit shit!

It still just looks like a white, unidentifiable blob to you, but you hear something else under the whispers growing in strength. A scratching, a dragging, like fingernails against rough skin... It permeates the word with something that is terribly unnerving and oh god you reaaaallllyyy want to leave now.

As it approaches you, you start to pick out human features. Once in a while, you see a knee, a shoulder, or a lock of hair. But most of all you see the hands. 

They're everywhere. The entire, shifting mass looks like a group of hundreds of people packed so densely together they form something akin to a rat king. Their hands permeate the space, pushing off wrists, scraping each others' knuckles, digging their fingernails into other palms, trying to reach up and out. Their arms extend out of their confined space, hands grabbing for you, shambling towards YOU.

It's hard to think of something other than "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT" for the time being, so you just focus on doing that.

The group looms into your vision, taking up all you can see. Even in the front of it all, you only see hands, hands, hands. The whisper is loud now, echoing in the deepest sense of self you have left in you. The hands reach out in strangling, jittering motions, shambling still ever closer to your being. 

You would sell your soul for your rifle right now.

Their fingers reach for you, covering your sight in grotesque distortions of the pads of hundreds of fingers. Their palms are all open, facing up, what you can see of their wrists is being offered to you. The gesture, you realize, isn't meant to be hostile. They stop, hands frozen and hovering, enveloping you with contained and condensed mass.

You have a sick feeling that they want you to join them. Maybe ramble across the dark with them. Their whisper dies down. They wait for your answer.

How do you answer? You can't talk. Maybe they can read your mind or something? You try focusing really, really hard on the question "What are you guys?," thinking not only of the words in English, but also on the feeling behind them, a curiosity and a quest for knowledge, just in case if they can't understand you.

You get a response back. "suuuAACHhhkchch" or something. The same word they were saying before. Great, okay. You have learned literally nothing new besides the incredibly creepy fact that they can now read your mind. Get out of here, hands! This is your space and you do not appreciate them groping around in your thoughts.

You try to think of a good yes-or-no question to ask them. You are fairly certain that you can figure out basic positive responses, at least with the help of a little body language. Okay, at least with the help of extra hand gestures. So you concentrate really hard on, "If I come with you, do I get a body?'

At least this time it's a different word. You hear a u and an h and two soft clicks in the back of the throat and it sounds like nothing you've ever heard of. Goddammit. You can't even start guestimating as to what kind of answer that was, since their palms are still hovering in front of you. Maybe you're not as good at linguistics as you thought. Arrrrggghhh this is really frustrating!!!

Maybe you should try a different tactic. You try concentrating on "WHAT?" as strong as you can, as LOUD as you can make your thoughts. 

The hands fold away, collapsing into themselves and retreating, leaving you in darkness. They do it like the buildup to a great wave, the kind of great wave which once sent your Grandpa a quarter mile off the coast when you were six and vacationing in Chile. 

You feel a great emptiness beneath you, looming up to meet the edges of your sight. You jerk your vision down. It looks like someone cut part of a scenery out of a magazine and pasted it beneath you. You are at the top stair of a very, very deep hole, at least a quarter mile in diameter, with a spiral staircase leading down to the depths which you cannot see. The staircase circles around the circumference of the hole, starting where your vision is anchored and circling down to your left. It's clearly lit in the void, you can see the brown stairs as if the sun were shining down above you, but the sun does not reach to the bottom of the hole. The edges of the pit are carefully engraved with clay and brick, but they have jagged edges against the blackness like someone took one of those crafty wiggly scissors to it.

For some reason, you feel like jumping.

Wait, no, you REALLY feel like jumping. 

Haha, too bad you can't, hands who are probably invading your thoughts right now! You don't have a body, you can't-

Something pushes you off the step.

fuck

the sense of falling wells in you

and then

You are caught in the crook of a warm, warm arm.

You hear a massive scream echoing around you.

Then

you're not there anymore.

You are flat on your back on the side of the road in Texas.

You feel sick. You scramble on all fours towards the ditch and empty out the contents of your very human, very much alive stomach.

It's all acid too. Your arms shake, threatening to give out, and you feel sweat drip down your brow.

You manage to sit back and let your butt hit the pavement a little too hard. What the hell just happened? How did you get here? How do you have a face again?? What is happening???

Okay, okay. Remember Grandpa. Don't. Panic.

You take one big staggering breath, hold it in for as long as you dare, then breathe it all out through your teeth. Your blood hammers in your head and you take one more, closing your eyes and just thinking about getting your air supply. When you feel ready, your eyelids raise and you stare at the clean, musty green grass growing just off the road.

First step: Don't Panic. You wish those two words were printed in large, friendly letters in a crop circle or something, but you'll just have to pretend for now. This item is as checked as it's going to get, so you reluctantly move down the list.

You feel as though you should add a step to your Grandpa's almost foolproof post-party checklist, since you're kind of stretching the definition of "party" right now. So, step one point five: Is your body all here?

You try clenching your hands and your nails dig into your palms a little too hard. You pat your legs and arms and face, and give one tentative pat to the top of your head, finding it solid and intact. You think this is good news. There's no blood, no mysterious brain nibblets, no dangling limbs, and no ripped clothing to even signify your motorcycle accident with Karkat even happened. Oh, wait, maybe you should check if this isn't just some weird next step of the afterlife.

You put two fingers to the side of your neck, checking for a pulse. You have one, after all, which means that you are not only alive, but you also must have a heart. You breathe in and out, listening to the pump in your neck slow down with each calming gasp of air.

You think you have a good enough idea of what parts still compose the Jade Harley experience, so back to Grandpa's checklist. Observe surroundings.

You are clearly on the same road you got hit by a truck on, in almost exactly the same spot where you skidded to. The truck isn't there anymore, that jerk. You shake your fist at the air to blow off steam, but then place your palm back on the asphalt because you feel a bit silly gesturing wildly to no one. You stand up and glance around. There's no blood streaks on the road, no semblance of an accident, and hey, is that your motorcycle?

It's parked down in the ditch. Well, okay, it's parked _sideways_ in the ditch, but you figure that is fine enough. Everything is very much intact, there aren't any scratches or pangs or mysterious body parts stuck to it. You are beginning to think that maybe your little adventure didn't even happen.

You scramble down the slope and open up the passengers seat. Your helmet is there, uncracked and untouched, wicked flame decals still as prime as the day you melted them onto the shell.

Observe surroundings has been checked, crossed out, and inked over. You have checked the shit out of your surroundings.

You decide to change Step Three to something more relevant. Or, at least, something you HOPE is more relevant. It would be pretty gross if someone just pulled over and decided to sex up your body on the side of the road. But you figure if someone did that, your pants would probably be unzipped right now. And they aren't. 

So Step Three: Did Karkat slip shrooms to you somehow so he could run off with your money?

Fuck.

That was all some terrible, terrible trip, wasn't it?

You dig your wallet out of the left saddlebag, a old leather piece that got chewed up by your dog, and you flip it open. There was one thing in it before, your credit card. And it's not in there now.

Goddammit. That little shit. You could have irreplaceable brain damage from hallucinogens! Depending on what they were of course. You check for your handgun in the other saddlebag. Good. Still there. When you get your hands on him...

Step Three is a resounding and awful "Yes."

You should be ten minutes away from the town Karkat wanted you to drop him off at, and you can probably find a phone and an internet source so you can call your credit card company for identity theft. And also get some anti-baby medicine. If you find out that he stole your credit card, made you trip out, AND knocked you up?? You will stop at nothing to hunt him down and personally force feed him random mushrooms from the forest while strangling him with the ends of your hair!

You start up your motorcycle. The wheels work, there is quite enough fuel in the tank, and the engine almost soothes away all your stress. You put on your helmet, making sure it's snug and comfy.

You offroad alongside the highway until the hill is shallow enough to vault yourself onto the asphalt. A car from a half a mile back honks at you out of surprise, but you just speed up. You don't want any cagers taking up your attention.

Okay, you are FOR SURE never, ever, ever going after the weird looking dudes ever again. Especially not the ones with potty mouths, cheese grater voices, or poor taste in clothing. You begin to assemble your own three step checklist for picking up guys. You wish Grandpa had taught you that list, you're pretty sure that was his area of expertise. You think he might have had a fanclub.

You take the exit to the town and come to a stoplight. You plant your feet and wait for the light to change.

As the engine rumbles within you, you sense that something is subtly different about the way it vibrates your body. You feel lighter, like you resonate less, but that might be because you just woke up from a bad trip and you're filled with the sleepies. The problem isn't the rumble in your head or anything, specifically, it's in... Your chest.

Oh no. No no no. It was a drug induced trip, it couldn't have been real. You rip a glove off and shove it in your pocket. You place your hand against the center of your chest as hard as you can. Blood thunders in your ears and inside your palm but do you really feel a heartbeat? You can't tell over the engine.

You're going to have to pull over and try again. It's probably just the engine though, there's no way you could have a pulse without a heart.

"Don't bother checking, your bloodpusher is sitting comfortably in my stomach, currently being digested by all sorts of-"

"What the hell?" you whip around, smacking your helmet against the flailing arms of Karkat.

"Hey! Don't fucking interrupt me, I really felt that metaphor was going places."

He's sitting in your passengers seat, slouched over, same stupid tshirt, knees hugging your waist, and frowning like YOU'RE the one who did something wrong. He dangles your credit card in front of your helmet.

"Here's your indented purchasing plastic. I needed it to pay off the motel, remember? I can't be leaving debts in places, that would make me some kind of jerkoff bum."

How the hell? You are going to break his nose in SO many places!

"You STOLE my credit card to pay off your personal stay, you made me go through some kind of hallucinatory HELL so you could do so, and you somehow got this all done in enough time to jump back on my bike without me noticing and flaunt that to me?"

"I might have only done one of those. Hint for you, since it looks like some of your brain didn't get put back in your skull: it's the last one." He looks up. "Green means go, right?"

You don't budge an inch. There aren't any vehicles coming. "I can't believe you! You are the scum of the Earth!"

"Look, Jade Harley, whose name I clearly know even though you did not introduce yourself and your plastic rectangle says 'Jade Egbert,'" Now the fucker is just being a bragging, enigmatic asshole. "It doesn't matter if you don't agree with the things I did, because I can do whatever the fuck I want with your shit, your head, and *you* specifically, because I am your *god* now. I am your wrathful creator, born to painfully and slowly destroy what I create and weave terrifying things from the dark feelings within your blood. I have singlehandedly saved your primal soul from the underworld, cradling it like some fucking newborn away from the pit of slaves. I know your entire, pathetic life, and you should be *lucky* to serve me in y-"

"Yeah yeah, whatever," you say. Boooorrriinnnggg. "Just tell me what drugs you slipped to me and I might not break your toes."

You hear a honking behind you, looks like the car caught up.

"If you go right, you can get to my apartment," he says. "Which, if you recall, was the goal of this piece of shit excursion."

"Fuck you, we are going to a public place!" you say. Or maybe you should go to his apartment, after all, handcuffs and guns aren't things to use in public. But then again: Texas. They wont care.

You go straight, Karkat yelling obscenities at you while you practice your ignoring skills. You drive through the main street of a small town, turning left at an intersection when you see a sign for a public park. It looks like a nice place, grassy, next to a grocery store, and you even see a couple walking along the path surrounding a fountain. Perfect for a subtle interrogation.

You park in the tiny lot, turning off your bike and hopping off to open the saddlebag with your handgun and handcuffs in it. You decide to just take out the handgun, the handcuffs might not be appropriate for a small town American park. You raise it up, then threateningly pop some ammo in it. 

"Jade, if I didn't actually need a goddamn helmet to survive that wreck, what makes you think your worthless mortal weapons will do any damage whatsoever against my pristine self?"

"Be quiet, ass!" you say, as loud as you can without disturbing the nice couple. "I tell you when you can talk and that time is when we go over there and sit on that picnic table!"

You point at a wooden picnic table, a little ways down a slope and nicely situated behind a bush and a short tree. Private enough to have a "nice" conversation, and public enough so if you get in trouble people will come running. Besides, you've always dreamed of pointing a gun under the table at someone in a context like this!

"I don't have to follow your orders, you dumb-dumb," he says. "In fact, you should follow *my* orders, as I am the one clearly in charge of this goddamn situation."

"Oh yeah? And what would YOU order me to do?"

He is contemplative, his hand moving up to itch his nose. "... Go over to the picnic table?" he finally says.

"That's right, fucker. Now start walking."


	5. That Boy is a Monster (Muh-Muh-Muh-Monster)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the ever-increasing chapter guesstimation total. I promise this will be the last increase.

"I am going to make this clear and concise, the exposition will soon be flowing through your head like the gross, snot filled water rushing in your nasal cavities when you stick one of those pots up there during a bout of human sneezing disease."

He looks so serious when he shouldn't, like he's a eight year old trying to argue why his lunchbox is prettier than the other kids' during afterschool daycare. A gust of wind carries down from the hill, shaking the leaves above you and casting dancing shadows on the table, blowing your hair around and ruffling Karkat's bangs over his eyes. He blindly pushes them out of the way, bumping his elbows against the sharp, old picnic table as he does so. You fiddle with your gun in your hands, taking note if anyone is watching. There's just the couple far away to your right, strolling along the fountain with a painted swan statue, and not another person in sight within the tree-speckled and patchy green park. There's no one to your left, either, just a steep hill with a empty sidewalk on top, and a grocery store across the street.

Karkat gets his hair under control. Or, as under control as it ever was.

"Alright, there's three points, try to pay attention," Karkat re-situates himself on the bench of the picnic table. He holds up a finger. "One: I am a god. An ancient, terrifying, and hopelessly incompetent creator god. Or should I say, *possible* creator god because I don't remember shouting these many fuckers into existence." Another finger, held up next to his face, he looks like a Japanese schoolgirl. "Two: I ate your heart, making you immortal. I probably *shouldn't* have done that and just have let you stay dead, since I've pretty much doomed you, but it's been so long and I couldn't goddamn help myself and I have cravings as strong as a mom pregnant with quintuplets. And it's been ages since I last ate something gourmet. Hell, it's been like five years since some jaded hipster poet killed a bird for me under the guise of art. They didn't mention my name or anything, but whatever, what's mine is mine." Third finger. "Three: Symbolically, this means that you belong to me and should be eternally complacent in my realm, but I've long since given up on that shithole of a place. You're pretty much free to do whatever with your insurmountably depressing immortal life, as long as you buy me a Mississippi Mudslide once every few months to keep up appearances. Extra ice cream, easy on the Kahlua."

He folds his arms, looking smug. "Hope you caught all that, asstit, because I'm not going to repeat myself."

"Karkat... That's absolutely ridiculous." He's high, isn't he? He's totally high. "This isn't a joke! I have a gun under the table, you know. I can shoot you if you don't tell the truth!" You hit his knee with the gun under the table as a reminder. He doesn't even move.

"Truth? I am the master of truth, pulling it up from the dredges of the fucking pit of filth that encompasses human falsehoods and preaching it like one of those Jesus priests." He looks down at his 'got jesus?' shirt. "What's this guy the god of anyway? I can't figure it out. Whatever it is, it's not language, because that shit is my bread and fucking butter."

You sigh, loudly, trying to express with only the most ultimate of subtleties that you are done with his stupid jokes. "Really? God of... 'language?' That's the best you could come up with?"

"My full title is actually god of language, blood, and flesh."

"Karkat that is the worst drug dealer name I have ever heard."

He buries his face in his hands with a audible slam of his elbows on the table. He's reacting like you said something completely outlandish and unexpected! You are just giving him an honest critique after all. Aren't drug dealer names supposed to be short? Like "Dinger" or "Scrubs" so you can secretly talk to them about heroin or something? Or maybe that's the rule with pimp names. Wow, you could be a really good drug dealer in comparison to Karkat.

"Holy fucking shit, you are so in denial." he says, voice directed towards the peeling wood of the picnic table. "Denial has marched into your bedroom, spread eagled itself on the bed, and allowed you to jam your dick into its laced up ass."

"I am not in denial! That is just a really lame drug dealer name! Maaayybbee 'flesh' and 'blood' are kind of metal, but 'language' doesn't make any sense. You literally called me a 'dumb-dumb' like, ten minutes ago. For that reason and that reason alone it is unbelievable."

He puts his face down against the edge of the table, brown finish flicking off into his hair. He lets out a moan, groaning for a ten second streak before you make an audible 'click' noise with the hammer of your gun (even though it's automatic and you don't actually need to do that) to shake him up a little bit.

"Whatever, I am not here for your mysterious dealings in the underworld!" you say. "Just tell me what drugs you slipped me! And when you slipped them to me, I guess, since I have to improve my reflexes!"

"I didn't- Fucking-" he sits up and drags his nails across his cheeks, making some incomprehensible garbling noise. The couple standing by the fountain drop their handhold and look over at you with furrowed eyebrows. Is he throwing a tantrum or something?

"Are you throwing a tantrum?" you say. "Karkat, there's pills for that kind of stuff, you know. Or maybe you could just TAKE SOME SHROOMS TO CALM DOWN."

"HRRNRNNGGG, okay, okay that is the last fucking straw in this goddamn haystack. I am so fed up with your ignorant shit, I am pulling out the linguistic guns hidden in the deepest parts of my asshole and aiming for your unrefined eardrums."

"Um, there are already people staring, I don't think that pulling out your secret drug dealer weapons from your poop chute will look good on your police report."

"They're not actual guns you know," he says, smacking his hands down on the table. You hear the couple scurry away from you. "It's a metaphor. I know you have trouble wrapping your brain around that shit, but you're going to have to accept the fact I have serious mystical wordsmithing powers and they are ready to crash down and smother you like a really scratchy pillow over your nose."

"Oh, right, like talking with silly words is even a POWER." you giggle. Karkat looks at you dead serious, his eyes narrowing, his voice lowering in volume.

"Jade, I can take the solidified heap of unmolded filth that is your unrefined soul, then shape it with my linguistically gloved hands and turn it into goddamn pottery, fired only by the flames of the Kiln of Understanding and painted by the Berry Juice of Language Past."

You feel a little uncomfortable. Karkat looks different, less fake-angry and more subdued. You try to laugh but it comes out a little nervous. "Karkat, that metaphor didn't make any sense. Are you sure you're not just the drug dealer of loud yelling and being generally annoying?"

He props himself over the table, getting into your space bubble. You don't like him there, but you have your gun under the table and you don't want to show you're nervous by drawing back. His voice sounds hoarse, unused. "Okay, do you want a demonstration, is that it? I can make and unmake you in four words, do you really want me to give you just one, primitive lick of my power Popsicle? I'll give you half of it, just the melting, blueberry flavored 'make' part of the creation and destruction word-ice."

"Yeah right, you criminal! You're just being a big faker."

"Alright, three. I am going to say three, ancient, universally understandable words, the last of which will literally make you lose muscle control and shit yourself. I hope your bowels are fucking empty because this is a thing that happens. You had best not mock me or I might say the fourth, which will pretty much erase you from this dismal Earth, and not even my immense command of human language can bring you back. That, by the way, is the only thing that can possibly end your pitiful existence, short from bombing the shit out my realm and incinerating your corpse."

He clears his throat. Something like the static before a lightning strike surrounds you. This... can't be real, can it?

He forms the first syllable, his lips pressing together and out, sending out a sound which strikes through your center like a spear. It rocks your thighs and resonates with a low note in your core, sounding like the deepest tone of a marimba playing in your brain and vibrating through your blood. The syllable ends with a hard, melodious shake in your empty chest and you crumple into the wood of the table, something hidden lighting up inside you in recognition. He just said your name.

The second word spasms your sight and you see stories from sound. You try to tell him to stop, it's too much, but your language is lost in the noise of the pure linguistic code singing in your head. You lose track of where you are in this word, no longer feeling the hard wood of the table or your gun or the skin punctured by your nails. The word tells you about your grandpa, about your love filled past, about how you would cry and cry and cry in every moment of weakness and you doubted yourself after every breakdown. It tells you about the eventual triumph over self, the implications that had for you as you wander the world in a lost state, stuck in a earthly dream and floating like a cloud, trying desperately to get out through breakups and big machinery. And it hurts your mind and your ears and your throat and every little millimeter of your raw soul.

You find your own thoughts in the word, and you try to scream, tell him to stop, anything, and you know he hears you but he keeps his voice strong over yours, bending your language into nothing.

Then, silence.

You are face down in the cracks of the picnic table, your tears and spit wetting the surface and smearing splinters over your cheeks. The air is cold and sharp against your hair, blowing it into the wood. From far away you hear "I fucking told you, didn't I?" and then some other things too but you're not listening to Karkat because now you have a choice to close your ears and mind.

You turn your face to the side, the wind stinging your wet cheeks. You find your voice. "You said you would do three words."

"I pitied you." He tries to touch your face, to dry a tear. You swat him away.

"What are the other two?"

"Something about your newly found morality and letting you know this is the end of your miniscule existence, then a word that takes you away. That word can't make a single sound... it's a goddamn bitch to pronounce."

This has to be some awful trick, some weird prank set up by your brother, who is going to rip off his disguise as one of the members of the happy couple and yell "PUNK'D!" at you. This goes against like, everything in science. Ever. "What kind of god are you?"

"What? Did you forget?" he's trying to sound like his pretend haughty, angry self, but there's a quiet pang in the back of his voice. "God of language, blood, and flesh."

"Besides for those things not being similar at all-"

"They totally are if you think for a single goddamn second about it."

"-Whatever!" you sit up, rubbing your hands over your face. Your voice still shakes with rapid breath, and it's a struggle to keep your tone flat. "I'm talking like, from where? From what religion? I mean, you're clearly from somewhere around here, maybe from South America? And some of the things you say... It's pretty easy to figure out you're not used to modern life."

"Fuck, it's that obvious? It's harder to get words from objects, you know. People are easier to identify."

"Uh, okay, sure, I'll pretend that made sense." you wipe your hands on your thighs, getting rid of the tears and shards of wood. You press hard on your jeans to still your quivering hands. You appear to have dropped your gun under the table. "But where are you from? Like, are you some Aztec deity?"

"Who?"

"Uh, Incan? Mayan?"

"Oh I watched some shitty factual telecommunication medium about those guys. Nope, sorry, I'm older than those fuckers."

"Older??? How older???"

"I dunno, a few ten thousand years, maybe."

This literally cannot be happening right now, maybe you're still high. Oh god, you WISH you were high, but you know you are fully in charge of every single brain cell still pumping away in your head. "That's... That's impossible, there's no way people back then had that kind of cognitive ability to worship a god of _language_."

"Well they fucking did."

"How are you not crazy? Living that long would drive anybody crazy, and I don't care if you're a god!"

"I take a lot of naps."

"What?"

"Really long naps."

"What???"

"Decided to wake up for movies though, I don't know how I lived my meaningless, lordly existence without the fine art of romantic comedies. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure 'Blue Jasmine' is showing sometime this afternoon, how about we-"

"ARE YOU SHITTING ME RIGHT NOW!? I AM GOING THROUGH A CRISIS AND YOU WANT TO TAKE ME ON A DATE????"

He tries to say something in reply, but you hold up your hand to stop him. "Karkat, you are not going to say ANOTHER WORD until I get my thoughts sorted! This informational overload was a lot to absorb so I am going to take my sweet time and have myself a nice, quiet, yelling-free reflection! You got that?"

He presses his lips together like he's trying to crack a walnut between them. Is he holding his breath? Breath holding is not the same thing as not talking! But whatever, you don't care anymore.

You close your eyes. You push your hand up against your chest. Nothing. Not even the smallest hint of a beat.

There's a pretty slim chance now that this whole happening ISN'T something supernatural. Whether he's actually a god or he's lying through his awkwardly cute teeth remains to be seen. He could be a ghost or a demon or something else that eats hearts that you aren't familiar with. You forgot a lot of the mythology you learned as a child, preferring to seek the cold hard facts just dripping with science-y ooze after you hit puberty. Although you could probably remember if you thought about it really hard, after that forced flashback Karkat put you through. You weren't looking to have your problems so clearly dictated to you today. You really hope he doesn't think about what he's saying too hard. You shudder.

"Oh shit, Jade, are you okay?" you hear. He has disobeyed your request for quiet! "Because if you aren't, we have established I have word bending powers and can use them for good or evil. I'd use them for good in this case, you know, to make you feel better and maybe calm you the fuck down. Or I can make up some soothing poetry in any language you want. I can think up some pretty good swear words in Jordanian Arabic, if that's the kind of shit that-"

"Any language?" you say. "Fuck you Karkat, then you DO know Spanish! You liar!"

"I never said I *didn't* speak it. It brings back really bad memories of my absolute incompetence and inability to act because I'm literally the worst goddamn being on this plane of existence! If I was awake when they came over here shit would have gone down a hell of a lot different."

That's some dumb reasoning. He doesn't like Spanish but he lives in Texas? "Then why don't you leave? Go to Minne-snow-ta or something?"

"I can't. I have to babysit another one of my fuckups, coddling it into horrifying darkness and breastfeeding it into submissiveness."

Fuckups? Oh no... "Karkat, if you tell me that you have some illegitimate half-god child-"

"Fuck, no. Ew. I don't get involved with that kind of drama. My fuckup is a place, not a person. Unless if you count me as the fuckup, then yes, I guess I have to babysit myself to prevent the toddler that is every future and past iteration from coloring all over the walls with conical purple wax."

"Crayon. It's a cr-" you smack your forehead. "Ugh! Whatever! I am not done thinking and you need to be quiet right now!"

The important thing is to stay on your toes. It seems that weapons, even huge bludgeoning ones like cars, can't wound him permanently. You make a mental note: do not throw a smart car at Karkat in a dangerous situation. Although, if what he's saying is true, he can't really hurt you either with weapons... Immortality, huh? That's kind of a big thing to think about and you figure you've got a long time to dwell on the implications if it's true, so you shuffle that out of mind. His words, though, that's what you have to worry about. You hope that shoving your fingers in your ears and singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" off key will be enough to dismiss that problem.

This whole situation is absolutely ridiculous.

You have slept with a god. Or at least some form of supernatural creature. But what if he is a god, though? A god who literally used his command of language _to please the shit out of you_. Oh, if that's true... You go, Jade Harley. You try to suppress a very strong grin, but it doesn't work and your cheeks just kind of puff out around your thin lips. You managed to seduce a terribly ancient, probably bloodthirsty being while drunk and on the rebound. Grandpa would have been proud.

"What the hell is that expression? You look like you're going to throw up a family of slugs."

His lip is raised like he's going to start growling at you and his eye tooth looks surprisingly nubby and you just think he is the goddamn cutest. Although you shall restrain yourself for now, since you still don't have conformation on what Karkat actually _is_ and you're a bit miffed at him since he's pretty much responsible for your hypothetical death. Maybe later though, you'll have to ask him to repeat what he told you last night in his rented room. In great detail. Hehehehe.

"I was just... Oh, never mind." you say, letting the air out of your cheeks. "Hey, did you... uh, language me into not using protection last night?"

"Hell no, that would be a shitty thing my past self would do. I just told you I was a god and could literally spirit STDs off of me and you totally believed it." That does sound like drunk you. "Of course I didn't necessarily tell you that in English, but you did a fucking spectacular job communicating your inebriated feelings back to me."

"Really?"

"Pffft, no, there was a lot of flailing and yelling involved and most of it was you. I do have to give you credit for pronouncing my name right though, not a lot of inferior, mortal beings can do that."

"Well maybe we're not so inferior, you dumbass!" you stick your tongue out at him. "And of course I pronounced your name right! I've been pronouncing it correctly this whole time, duh!"

"No, you pronounced it correctly during a pretty fucking *climactic moment* when I accidentally told you my fucking mighty identifier. 'Karkat' barely scratches the surface of the eternal nomenclature which makes up my existence. Like how 'Jade' can't fully express the kind of person you are."

Oh, well that's kind of cool. It's like that "true name" plot device in one of your brother's anime movies. Or like your social security number. "Tell me your name again!"

"You still haven't driven me to my apartment. Be a good fucking gentleman and take your lady home after her wacky fun time at the brothel, then I'll tell you."

You pick up your gun from the dirt. "I don't want to drive, can't we fly there or teleport or something?"

"Fuck flying, who would want to fly around anyway?" he tries to laugh but it comes out strained and wet, like he's on the verge of tears. "Ha. Haha. Uh, instantaneous spatial god transportation, or, whatever you call it, takes a while to set up and requires a lot of blood from all parties involved. Since I don't think you want a recap of your little accident today, I think it's best if I ride Harley to- uh, I meant, it's best if we ride your Harley to my place so you don't bleed out like a meaty animal sacrifice."

You think about calling out his Freudian slip, but he probably wouldn't know who Freud was and you don't really know either. You decide on commenting on that weird bit in his last sentence. "Karkat that metaphor was really creepy." You stand up from the bench, and brush off some wood specks from your butt. "You weren't one of those weird gods, with the big pyramids and stairs that priests would kick bleeding people down, right? No human sacrifices, right?"

He narrows his eyes and holds out his hands like he's got two oranges in them and doesn't know what to do about it. "Are you shitting me right now? I thought that was obvious. Why do you think I ate your heart? You probably heard me when I said this, but I'll say it again..." He stands up, making a show of pushing up against the table. "It's been a real fucking long time since someone died for me. A long, long time. And I was just about out of juice."

Oh. Ohhhhhh. You don't want to drive him home so much anymore. "What... happened to the others? Are they all like me? Running around with no hearts?"

"I fucked up real bad." he says. He's so quiet, like his voice is weighted down by something terrible. "And I wont do that with you."

Ominous.


	6. Your Bleeding, Liberal Heart

You sit on his couch, picking at the loose pink threads in the corner cushion, and cursing every stupid curiosity gene in your body. Why do you have to be such a innate scientist? Jade Harley: Solving every conundrum that comes her way since nineteen ninety one. You could just leave, walk right out the door, never look back and live the rest of your life without having to think of the weird guy you met at a club ever again.

But what if the rest of your life is... forever? You could still just tally-ho out of the building without looking back. If you really wanted to die, it wouldn't be any problem to find him again, right? Besides, you're pretty creative, there's probably some way to create a timely death for yourself when you want to. You rip out a particularly long string. 

Dishes clatter in the kitchen. "Want any hot cocoa?" he asks.

"It's like, a hundred degrees out."

"Fine, Miss Picky. I'll make cold cocoa then."

What the hell is cold cocoa. Is it just... hot chocolate with ice cubes in it? That sounds pretty gross. You swing your legs up over the couch and vault off the back, catching your balance on the fuzzy white carpet. 10/10, first place to Jade Harley! You take a left into the kitchen and stand at the entrance, shoulder flicking off a bit of peeling wallpaper, and you watch Karkat try to pull out a saucepan from a cupboard at floor level. A frying pan manages to slide out onto his forehead, which elicits comical storm of swear words.

"You're reaaaaallllyy a god?"

"Yes. Fuck. Anyway get the hell out of here, I can't have some nobody in the cooking world learning the secrets of my master culinary prowess." He rubs his face with the back of his hand, a clumsy motion, like he's trying to wipe away some kind of embarrassment. A set of six bowls falls onto the floor with an audible thud (and an audible swear word).

"Oh my gosh, you totally get nervous when someone watches you cook." you say. Your brother went through a phase like that in middle school. "Afraid you might mess it up if someone is watching?"

"No!" Wow, okay, he is pretty bad at lying. His tone is perfect, said like he's got no doubt he just has cooking secrets to keep. You wouldn't have caught it if you weren't looking at him. But his face is all red and scrunched up, his eyes dead set on a particularly interesting tile. It's pretty cute. "Hrrnng, just. Go sit on the couch or something. I have paid-for extended human entertainment on the television."

You decide to oblige, giggling to yourself as you back out of the kitchen. You turn to face the living room. It's pretty small, a scratchy old couch with kitschy sun-faded blue and pink zig-zag pattern being the only piece of furniture in the space. The entry way is to the right of the couch, a "FUCK OFF" mat that Karkat appears to have made out of an old shirt and permanent marker serving as a stand for your discarded shoes. There are also two closed doors on the wall across and kiddy-corner to you, which you assume lead to his bedroom and bathroom, respectively. There's a fireplace across from the couch that appears to be decorative, and a TV has been literally duct-taped to the brick, with a huge pile of DVD cases in the fake hearth. Just how does Karkat even function?

You roll over the back of the couch and plop onto your seat. You don't really want to watch TV, so you decide to chat up Karkat.

"Hey," you yell, turning towards the back wall. "So are you part of... a pantheon or something?" 

You hear something drop against metal. "Yeah. There were seven of us fuckers, total."

"Seven? That's kind of a low number." You decide to turn back around, satisfied that your voice carries enough volume without having to twist.

"What were you expecting, twelve?" A scraping noise, it's slow. "I don't know how many of us survived the long, dark, drag of the ages, but I know for certain there are a few lucky fuckers who are completely, undoubtedly, unbelievably dead."

Above the TV, there's a plain wooden mantle with some pots on it. The shelf itself appears to have been recently made from a board somebody found in a dumpster, and nailed haphazardly into the brick. You want to get a closer look. "I want to hear about them! Tell me their stats!"

"Stats? Oh, right, shortened language variant of 'statistics.'" Something sizzles. Is hot chocolate with ice cubes supposed to sizzle? "I'll start with the dead ones. The god of death, who was really the only asshole in the whole damn place who I could basically tolerate, died. Go figure."

Yeah, this shelf definitely isn't stable. But it does manage to hold the items without collapsing from the weight. The four pots are fairly uniform, large in the base and curved like an apple, sculpted from some kind of dusty red earth. They're unpainted and lack any kind of decoration, besides for the ridges, which jut up in zig-zags and encompass the openings like flames. You peek inside one of them.

"The god of passing seasons, or 'Friend of Inevitability,' as she liked to be called, died with him, in some kind of bizarre, mythological happenstance. Which leads me off the beaten trail of this rundown and onto the forbidden track named 'tangent.'" Sizzle sizzle. "Words have strength, and while I'm not actually claiming to be the most powerful fucker in the decrepit deity club known as our pantheon, I was totally the most powerful fucker. Unfortunately, give a few blessings to a myth maker here and there and they end up spinning tragic tales about Death killing his best friend. Then himself."

It's really dark inside of the pot. Like, unnervingly so. You pick it up and hold it up to the light. "Why can't you just make some novelist write a story to bring your friends back?"

"Remember how I said I was out of juice? Juice meaning, mammalian corpse juices?" Something drips into glass. "In my heyday I was getting like, enough juice to open my own tropical bar, equipped with bamboo hut and a thousand different goddamn Hawaiian shirts. Now I'm barely getting enough to have myself even one-sixteenth of a Sex on the Beach."

The light doesn't impact the darkness at all. You imagine it stretching on forever in that little pot, like the darkness you saw when you went to... Uh, wherever that was. That is next on the agenda for asking Karkat about. But wait, no, this kind of dark isn't like that at all. This darkness seems flat, like it's dead. You stick your hand in it, and feel the bottom bump up against your knuckle. That's comforting. In retrospect it was probably pretty dumb to stick your arm in it though.

"Anyway, the next one is the god of luck, who my wife killed after-"

"Your WHAT?"

You almost drop the pot, but manage to fumble it between your fingers and catch it. Karkat yells even louder from the kitchen. "Oh don't judge, Jade 'I married my motorcycle' Harley. If you are freaking out about that minor detail you have clearly not read enough mythology."

"Well, I just want to know if she's going to turn me into a spider or something! I don't want to weave silk all day!" There's something on the bottom of the pot, a little engraving.

"Oh, fuck no, I don't even know if she's still around. And back in the day, when I actually gave a single shit about her, I was the one who would have imploded the fuck out of her lovers." A loud pouring noise. "But we had a falling out after she had some weird sex rivalry going on with another god. I think we're now demoted to the deadly level of 'amigoids,' if I ever run into her ever again."

It's clearly a sun. A tiny, stylized sun engraved on the bottom of the pot. You put it back on the mantle, then pick up the next one. "Is amigoids even a word?" 

"It is now, I'm the god of language, assfuck." 

This pot has a little skull with big eyes on the bottom, which looks like it was drawn by someone with a shaky hand. "It sounds like you were kind of controlling. Maybe you should apologize if you run into her again? And then you can maybe be friends?"

"Hell no, I never apologize." You hear something metal hit the floor. "Fuck. Anyways, the ones unaccounted for are as follows-"

You lift up the next one and there's a circle with little ridges on it, like some kind of sundial. They've got the same, dead darkness in them, and you don't miss the clear similarities between the icons and the dead gods Karkat described.

"-my wife, god of justice, her rival, god of wrath, and the god of the setting sun." You put both of the pots down. "Don't know about the two I previously mentioned, but I am like, 90% positive that the god of the setting sun isn't dead, because her dumbass title is pretty much a fancy way of saying she's the god of rebirth."

You pick up the last pot and look on the bottom. There's a picture that looks like a bleeding cut, and there's no doubt in your mind whose pot that is. You try to look inside but it's... stuffed with something?

"I hope you like the '#1 Dad mug' because my favorite cup is the one with the clever picture of the crab at the beach and I have claimed it for fucking ever."

You try grabbing whatever's inside. It feels like cotton, and you think it's the same kind of shirt that Karkat is using as a welcome mat. You start to tug it out.

"Okay, I realized I don't actually know what cold cocoa is so I hope you like hot cocoa with ice cu-"

You turn to face him, your arm shoved in his pot (there is a sexual metaphor in this somewhere). He's got a mug in each hand, the liquid in the crab cup sloshing awful close to the edge. His mouth is agape for about two seconds, before his eyebrows take a turn for the worse. You swear he's turning red, and not in a cute way this time.

He says your name again. Your... "true" name, or whatever. But instead of an earthly resonation in your core, it's like a sword through your breast that you have leapt forward to willingly take. It really, actually hurts, and you realize you can't move. You feel ceramic, like Karkat could shatter you with a single touch. And judging from the look on his face, he might actually do so.

He barks a command, five quick words in succession. It hurts your ears and sends jagged tremors all the way to your hands, compelling you to remove your arm from the pot. Oh, shit, you feel like you're going to die if you don't put this thing down. Every millisecond wasted as you move to place the container back down on the mantle fills you with a crushing doom, warning you of what will happen if you don't complete the task. When you hear the soft clink of clay against wood, the doom backs off, hanging over you until you step away... three steps, exactly. You walk backwards, counting to yourself, making sure you get the right distance away from the pot. 

When your heel touches the front of the couch, relief falls upon you and you sigh. 

Oh god, what were you doing, sighing? Karkat has clearly used his word powers to manipulate you! That is not okay at all! You feel your temper starting to rise and you are so ready to let that tidal wave roll in. You whip around to face him.

"Cocoa?" he holds up the mug to you, face flat and completely ignorant of what he just did.

"No!" you yell. He looks taken aback. "I can't believe you forced me to do something against my will! If you wanted me to put the pot down, you could have just TOLD ME!"

"Yeah, fuck that noise," he says. He keeps gesturing even with the cocoa in his hands. It splashes everywhere. "Look, remember where you fucking went when you died? Remember when I kept ominously mentioning my said 'fuckups?' Because that's what's in that jar you had. And if you opened that thing all the people stuck in that dank asshole of a place would come groping around for yours truly."

"I don't care what was in it, since it doesn't excuse the fact that controlling me is not a very nice thing to do!" 

"The goddamn savage nature of those slaves in there justifies the means, Jade." He drops the mugs in favor of using a particularly bizarre gesture, circling his arm around as if he wants you to take a ride on his train of thought. Fuck no.

"It does not! I get that you're freaked out about it, heck, the more I think about what you just said the more scared I get! But if you made a mistake and overreacted then just apologize!" You might be mad, but you're willing to compromise.

"No. Hell no, I was in the right. I was so in the right, the right was shining down upon me like some kind of brazen searchlight reflecting off a shiny baby's ass." he says. He's getting redder with every second. "Speaking of things that the other party in this argumentative shitstorm needs to say... I never heard a 'thank you, karkat!' leave your totally unattractive and not cute at all bucktoothed mouth for saving your sorry ass two hours ago. Fuck it, you should be thanking me for stopping you from opening that jar, since there would be a heavy damn price to pay if you opened it."

"I can't believe you!!! Don't place any of this on me!!!" You circle around the armrest of the couch, trying to get a more threatening angle. 

"Maybe your simple brain doesn't understand the gravity of the situation you were in, and that's why you're being a pitifully ungrateful mortal." You step over the wet spot from some of the cold chocolate and end up behind him. He turns to you, slouched over and even with your height, and yells into your face. "Those people you 'met' when you died are the sole members of my personal realm, and the *same as you.*" He straightens up, casting a little shadow over you. "If I didn't go save your sorry ass, or if I hadn't stopped you from opening my realm, you would have ended up in their hideous, heaving mass and become one of those hands trying to lovingly fondle me by ripping my organs apart out of some misconstrued grudge!"

"Well, maybe they're trying to prove a point!" you stand on your tippy toes and get into his face. He takes a step back. "If that crowd I met in the dark is just filled with all the people who you took hearts from, you're really a huge jerk! What kind of god of LANGUAGE demands human sacrifice anyway? And controls people for fun?"

"I didn't *demand* anything, those humans had their path chosen and waddled down it like it was a line at Disneyplace. And those commands are necessary to get basic points across to inferior beings!" Oh, that _bitch_. You are really, really mad, and he looks like he's getting into the flow of the argument. "You do realize I'm always simplifying things for you, right? Speaking in a high-level language for YOUR benefit, because I am one benevolent fuck."

"You are totally missing the point! You know what, maybe I should save Hands McHandsy the trouble and PERSONALLY stuff you into that pot!!!" you take two steps forward, pressing into his chest. He takes two steps back. "I bet they've got a great reason to be mad, after dealing with all the shit you put me through today, I think I'm beginning to understand what kind of terrible god you were!"

"Past me made some mistakes, sure, like ignoring a bunch of eternally raging sacrificed people for eons in my dark unimaginative afterlife, but we're not talking about past me. I saved your goddamn life today, ass, you should be grateful I even waste sacred words on you. And besides, grope city is now completely insentient, they're not even aware of why they hate, just that they want to get some vague notion of revenge on yours fucking truly. You can't call that non-emotion 'mad.'"

"I don't think you grew at all since back then!" you say. You realize you're sparring with a god who could easily kill you, but you don't care. Some things are more important. "You haven't changed one bit. You probably just saved me because you thought I was cute! If I was someone not-your-type you would have just let me join the mass of people you've left angry and upset and lonely!"

"I've also left them completely limitless in power! My words don't have any effect on them." Ugh! He's trying to rationalize his actions! 

"Well that might be nice! At least then I wouldn't have to stick around with you and fear being forced to do something against my will!" 

He doesn't fire back right away. You take advantage of the pause.

"Jade, I-"

"You're what??? YOU'RE WHAT???" you press into him, your hands balling into fists. He steps back.

"... It's hard being a god. I don't remember how *weak* you people are, how easy you are to set off."

"Fine! Let me try it then! You can be Karkat: stupid, human, JERK and I can be JADE, goddess of friends and family and open roads who never forgets for ONE SECOND what those beautiful humans are like!!! I would respect everybody and never ever control them, unlike you, you ass!!!"

"It's not that easy, you-"

"HOW FUCKING HARD COULD IT BE WHEN YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD? You could have spent every day of your stupid life getting to know friends and the earth and history and maybe not ignored all the people you pretty much killed. And I'm just taking a shot in the dark here but I think you could have maintained your realm and maybe prevented this mess! But instead you 'took naps.' YOU JUST FUCKING SLEPT!!!"

"Are you *really* fucking challenging a god? I don't need to know people who will fall apart in just a blink of my depressingly bloodied eye!"

"Isn't it worth it? Isn't it worth knowing people just for the sake of knowing them? For the sake of being happy? For the sake of growing? Or, wait, maybe even for the sake of not fucking up what little relationship you had with a girl in glasses?" A spear to his chest. He steps back with the blow. Bingo. "Write some poetry to get yourself out of this argument, asshole, because I don't think you can."

Karkat's back bumps against the shelf and it swings against the wall, the pots tumbling to the floor. Three of them hit the DVD case mound and come to a slow stop, but one hits the concrete of the hearth and shatters. You remember that as the pot with the sun on the bottom, and decide that maybe the god of luck wasn't so lucky after all. You're glad that Karkat's pot didn't break. 

Wait...

The shirt has been dislodged. You repeat. The shirt has been dislodged.

You watch a pool of darkness spill out of the opening of the pot, seeping over the DVD cases and onto the carpet under your feet. Karkat's mouth stops moving, his eyes fixed on the puddle dripping out of the container.

"Karkat..." you say, staring down at your feet. "We should get out of here..." He doesn't budge, doesn't make any indication he heard you, and you feel his muscles shake with delicate fear.

You hear a scraping and shambling, louder and louder, and watch as the first few inches of a hand rise out of the puddle, like it's checking the temperature. It juts out of a jagged mound of DVD cases, barely to the northwest of your very defenseless ankles. The fingers are suspended for a moment, before a great wail rises up from the dark.

There is no time for Karkat's fear! You have to get out of here!

You crouch and ram him right in the stomach with the front of your body, using your leverage to flip him over your shoulder so you can carry him outta this place-- firewoman style. He makes an awfully loud "hhgmmff" sort of noise, but doesn't protest when you heft him up straight and book it towards the door. 

You turn the doorknob, sparing a look around Karkat's thigh to the scene behind you.

Hands and arms are filling up the small living room, rising from the depths of the void, countless souls in a concentrated spot. They climb up the walls and spill into the kitchen and mass over the couch like hundreds of baby spiders. You don't even want to think about how many fingerprints will be on that TV.

You slam the door shut behind you with your butt, and the wailing and scraping stops inside. That's pretty eerie, did the noise alert them to your presence?

Apparently so, because the wood on the door splinters and breaks almost instantly, the pressure of a few hundred limbs crushing the only barrier in-between you and Karkat and a super scary afterlife.

You dart down the hallway, trying to make it to the staircase. Fingernails scrape against the brick and paint and bang against the doorframe, hands creaking and snapping with jarring movements, arms seeking their sacrifice with blind intent. Karkat doesn't stir, but his eyes lull towards you, his face away to his doom.

"Jade..."

His words barely carry over the wail and scraping and you know that for once, the god of language doesn't know what to say.

You're too slow, you can't even make it to the corner, before they overtake you. You are caught in a seething human mass of limbs, and they press against your face, your legs, your hair, everywhere. But they're gentle with you, patting your cheek with curiosity or with familiarity, pulling your hair almost playfully, and brushing against your legs as if to say 'oops, sorry! Didn't mean to bump into you.' But you feel Karkat getting pried away from you, you feel his head being ripped back by his hair, you feel his shudders as nails dig into his sides, you feel his intake of breath when they cinch his neck. Hands grip his shoulders, scrape against his ankles, pull around his torso, and you try to hold on.

They drag him into the mass, struggling even though Karkat isn't even fighting. You lose every part of him wrapped around your body until you're only left hanging onto his arm. The group has all but left you, happy with their prize and focusing on pulling Karkat away. His eyes dart around, processing some thought, some stupid last words to say before you never see him again. A hand pries your fingers off of his wrist with as much care as it can, while others push you back and away from Karkat. Hands clamp around his face and pull back on his hair. You can't hold on anymore. As the last of his body disappears into the writhing ex-human rage- he speaks.

It has a dual tone, the first: a small grey cloud weighted with water, something you want to hug the rain out of to make lighter again. The second: the tree trunk of a dead, ancient organism, something you start to run your fingers across in your desire to count the rings. Both are wrapped up quietly in a tentative light, the sun of it hitting the core of your ears. It's a word about how he feels about himself, how he's messed up absolutely everything, how right you were about everything. How he deserves this. After jumping through loopholes of comprehension and grammar in the rawest part of your brain, you manage to roughly translate it as "... Sorry."

The mass screams with their prize, now hidden away in the deepest reaches of the crowd, and they are sucked back into the room with inhuman speeds, leaving you silent and alone. Quiet.

Goddammit.

If you had a heart, it would be bleeding right now.


	7. Pulp Fiction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First off, I accidentally deleted two wonderful comments from this fic when trying to clean out my inbox. I am very sorry for this! I don't recall your usernames but your input put a smile on my face.
> 
> Secondly, thank you to all who have read this far and provided your feedback. I've enjoyed reading each and every one of your comments :)
> 
> I hope you enjoy the last two chapters of Jade Harley and the Rise of Her Badassery.

You are sitting in the middle of the hallway, hands supporting your weight on crossed knees, and trying desperately to think of a plan. Your mind is drawing a huge, panicked blank on what to do next, and you've got a feeling time is running out for the god of blood and swear words.

You grip your shins, digging your nails into the denim of your jeans. C'mon, Jade Harley! Excitement and complex plans are like, your middle name! Well, at least you think that's your middle name, your grandpa never showed you your birth certificate.

Alright, it always helps to brute-force an algorithm before solving it, so you'll apply that here. There's assuredly still a dark portal in the middle of Karkat's fireplace, just waiting for you to drop down there with guns-a-blazin' and use those hands as target practice.

But you've only got two clips and that's not even enough to make a dent in that mass. And can ancient, contorting masses of people even be harmed? Can they even bleed? You're just taking a guess here but you think it's a big, whopping no. 

And taking a step back from that, is going in alone really the best option? You have no idea if Karkat will be able to pull the same tricks he did before, considering you're no longer an ephemeral soul and he might be in pretty poor condition when you get to him. You have no certain way of being able to find the exit, considering the nature of the place you ended up after your death. You're going to have to leave a longass trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back after this journey to the underworld. Or at least a pretty lengthy rope.

You wonder if Karkat's got a big rope in his room. He seems like the kind of guy who would be all “Doomsday is coming! I must stockpile zombie fighting gear and thirty cans of astronaut ice cream!” Well, the emergency has arrived, and you're really hoping zombie fighting gear includes a long lasso. Or an emergency ladder. Also some astronaut ice cream, that stuff gives you the tummy yummies.

You jump up with a determined goal in mind, scaring one of the neighbors you were ignoring in the hall. Sorry, neighbor! Oh, he looks all confused, wandering around the hall like that. No, you have no idea why the door of the angry guy's apartment is crushed into splinters. No, you don't know what those noises were. But, don't worry neighbor, you're definitely on the case.

You venture into Karkat's apartment looking for something rope-like that can lead you to hell and back. You look through the kitchen, the living room, under the couch, in the cupboards, and in the bathroom, where you discover that Karkat uses “Radiant Red” shampoo despite having the blackest hair you've ever seen. What.

Now, you are usually one to respect somebody's privacy, but you've wasted so much time already and this is a desperate situation! It is time for you to search... the bedroom.

You open the door cautiously, expecting it to be smelly and full of icky boy things. But instead you find it rather neat and plain, bed and a nightstand the only furniture in the room, and a large red tapestry hanging on the wall. Tasteful. Too tasteful.

There's also a mirrored sliding door closet, which you immediately open. It's filled with like seven of the same sweatshirt he wore today and a ton of gray and black t-shirts he clearly got for free. Something reflects in your glasses, and you look down under the clothes. There's a cardboard box with some kind of shiny disc sticking out of it. The cardboard box is labeled “NOT MINE" on the front panel.

It seems suspicious as all hell and you're down for anything mysterious you can get right now. You pick up the box from the closet, surprised at its lightness, and start to dig through the contents.

There are six objects inside, packed in with a bunch of newspaper. The first is a black, obsidian disc with a sun carved on the back. Cool. You flip it over, and realize it's a mirror. A really shitty mirror, apparently, you can barely see yourself and the room around you in the reflection. Maybe it's too dark in here or something. Whatever. You put it down on Karkat's bed.

The second is a large tree branch, or a small tree trunk, that's been crudely carved in the shape of a baseball bat. It looks like it might have been painted at one point. This doesn't seem useful. You also set this on Karkat's bed.

The third is some kind of calculator. It's a set of twenty or so small notched discs, wrapped around a thick cylinder, and are moveable so that each different notch clicks into place with the one following it and preceding it. You mess around with it a bit and figure it does binary trees, or divisions and multiplications by two. This is hella rad. What cool technology! You hope Karkat doesn't mind if you pocket this. Or whatever god owns it. You clip it onto your belt (what girl travels without a belay device?).

The fourth is a very old looking ram skull. You reach out to pick it up, but something cold travels down your spine and you decide that isn't the best idea. You should probably leave it in the box.

The fifth is an absolutely stunning necklace. How the fuck did Karkat get this beautiful thing? It's huge too, when you put it on it goes down to your waist. Hundreds of very thin, silver threads drape down at varying lengths, with thousands of small sparkling star beads strung together and positioned on each thread so the entire piece looks like the milky way. Okay, you think you're going to take this one too. You feel a little guilty, but didn't Karkat say that all his god buddies where missing or dead? You'll give it back when you find whoever this belonged to, for sure.

The last object... is exactly what you're looking for. Well, sort of.

It's a noose. A really, really short noose. Damn, you can't get anywhere with this thing! You wonder who the heck gave this to Karkat to put in some box in his closet. You hope they're okay, this knot looks like it was tied by someone who has a lot of experience with these things.

You give it a good tug to check if it's really as solid as you think it is. It is, but the rope stretches a surprising amount for a simple tug. Huh. You pull on it a bit more, and the rope grows longer.

Magic extendable rope. Looks like you found your trail of breadcrumbs.

You shuffle back into the living room, carrying your prizes and heading for the still-dripping dark portal over the pile of DVD cases. You kneel down over it, sticking a finger into the goop. Your finger immediately feels cold and vanishes into the blackness. Well, that's good that it still works, but that was still a pretty dumb idea.

Your finger is still intact, albeit a bit chilly, when you pull your hand out, so you get to work slipping the black ooze back into the discarded jar. Through a strategic movement of DVD cases (you were always pretty boss at a game of pick-up sticks) you manage to direct most of the black stuff back into the pot. You stuff the opening with the welcome mat shirt from the front door.

You are well on your way to rescuing your patron god. Finally.

You make your way to the parking lot and find your motorcycle. The apartment building is positioned point blank in the middle of nowhere, so you don't bother putting on your helmet or anything when you drive off the parking lot and into a nearby cluster of trees and bushes.

You find yourself a fairly large, empty patch of land surrounded by all sorts of flora. While none of the trees or bushes are particularly tall nearby you, it still offers a lot of seclusion from curious neighbors. And it looks like there's a forest further in, which means nobody will be coming from that direction. You decide this is a place good as any to begin some kind of fantastical guerrilla rescue mission. Seriously.

You slip the stretchable end of the noose over your CVO, then tighten it so it gets cinched around the middle. You wont be stuck in any sort of hell while tied to a few-ton motorcycle without the keys. You figure this thing would resist movement more than any of the flimsy trees that surround you. The other end of the noose you tie around your waist, making sure it's securely fastened with one of your favorite knots.

You also grab your leathers from your saddlebags. Can't go into battle without your armor! The jacket shall be your forged cuirass and the gloves your unbreakable gauntlets. You also grab your pistol with its two remaining clips and holster to strap around your leg. The best offense is a good offense, as your grandpa always taught you.

You tug the shirt out of the pot, then tip the jar onto the ground. Black goop oozes from the inside, taking an eternity to pool onto the grass. As the puddle expands, you step back to let it grow to a size you're satisfied with. When the void's diameter is roughly your height, you tip the jar upright and stuff the shirt back in. You fasten it to one of the many useless buckles on your jacket (not so useless now, huh, fashion designers???) and take a deep breath.

It's time to go get Karkat. You hope you're not too late.

You back up a little. You've always found things to be much easier if you rush into them, and that probably goes for black hell pits you might be stuck in forever. Probably.

You take a running start and jump into the ooze. It's cold, really cold, and it slows your descent an uncomfortable amount. It goops over your legs and hips and chest and face, pushing you down into pure darkness.

You hit solid ground, or at least something dark to stand on, and you look around. Nothing. No landmarks. No light.

But you can see yourself. You swear you glow in the blackness. You check on the noose-- still securely attached. It trails off to your left, then disappears into the dark, like it got severed.

You go over and check that you're not actually stuck here... please say you're not stuck here... and you stick your hand behind the end of the noose. It also vanishes, and your fingers feel the warm comforts of life on the other side. That's good enough for you. Now, where to start.

You imagine that this space is like some kind of infinite stretching blackness, made to accommodate whatever a god would imagine for their afterlife. If you start wandering around, you wouldn't be willing to bet on the odds you'd stumble across Karkat. You would like to calculate those odds, and look wistfully at the binary tree calculator, but decide that “less than .00000000001 percent chance of running into Karkat” is satisfying enough.

And if you remember correctly, it didn't take that long for Handsy to find you. They probably all know you're here already, and it looks like they're not going to throw a welcoming party this time. Damn, you can't rely on them.

So what can you rely on? Well, you, you guess. Why are you glowing when everything else isn't? This is awfully similar to the Cardcaptors episode when Sakura was in a very sticky situation similar to yours. She had to realize the light was inside her heart and then- boop! A card came out. You always liked Cardcaptors, Li Shaoran was so cute and grumpy.

You look down at your chest. Maybe a light filled the place where your heart was. Could that be it, could this actually be an anime? 

You realize that is literally the dumbest thing you've ever thought. You can't believe you didn't notice what's making you glow until you looked down.

It is clearly the star necklace. The thing is definitely magic. Each bead sparkles against the darkness like thousands of little glowing planets and stars are trapped in each tiny, carved ball. Holy shit. You clap your hands together and whisper “Hey, whatever god or goddess owned this thing... uh, if you can hear me and if you're still alive... thanks! This is sooooo goddamn useful! And stylish! I would be in a terrible place without this! … Amen!”

You wonder if praying was a thing back then. Well, you'll have to send them a nice thank you card if you ever see them.

So, you found out what makes you glow, but how can you use this to your advantage? You want to use these beads to help you find Karkat. Or at least make things a little bit lighter, so you can see things besides yourself.

You wished you played more point and click adventure games, because you feel like this would have helped immensely in this situation. It seems like some dumb item puzzle. In fact, this whole thing seems like an elaborate game. Maybe you should have picked up that skull back at Karkat's and put it in your inventory. Dammit, have you learned nothing from watching your brother getting mad at Adventures of Monkey Island? Karkat is in danger and you neglected to pick up all the items you could have??

You pull off a strand of the necklace, and hold it in front of you. Still glowing. This can be your tester.

You try swinging them around, rubbing them on the ground, putting them on the ground and clapping, chucking a bead into the black void, wrapping them around the jar, putting them in the jar (they just sit at the bottom), chucking a few beads into the black void, and sitting down on the ground and moaning with your head in your hands. These things have to do something!

You get so mad, and remember the time John threw the old Mac across the room in gamer rage, and you feel like doing the same thing. You give your best battle cry and toss the whole strand into the air and... they stay there.

They spread out a bit, slowly, inching their way across the dark and hanging still when necessary. You take off the rest of the necklace, keeping a few threads and beads tied around you, and reluctantly throw those in the air too.

There were thousands of tiny beads on the necklace, but when they're up there, spreading out, you swear they're multiplying even more. You watch until there's something resembling a night sky and a horizon, and you can't help but smile at the prettiness of it all. 

You recognize the constellations – Gemini, Cancer, Libra... all look familiar and played out with beautiful beads. However, one particular star is glowing much brighter than normal-- a star called “Vindemiatrix.”

So be it. You take off in a run towards the star. The rope stretches behind you and wind generated by your speed pushes back your hair. The beads seem to whoosh by above you as you sprint towards the light. And it could be your imagination, but you think things are getting more... well lit.

Then, quite suddenly, you are at the bottom of a very large, very deep hole. Light from what seems to be the sun graces the top of the pit hundreds of feet above you, and doesn't even come close to reaching the ground where you're standing. A rather solid looking staircase spirals around the edge, following the path of the sun, and hits the ground on the wall next to where you're standing. You feel like the time when you were two and fell in a well, and your dog had to come rescue you. Things would be really dark where you are, but the stars have moved beneath your feet, highlighting the ground like a nightlight.

You think you're at the bottom of the pit you got thrown down at the beginning of this whole fiasco. That was the time you were rescued by Karkat, but this time you're rescuing him. How funny.

The darkened walls of the lower half of the pit, at least around your line of sight, kind of phase into the blackness you were in before. It's still rather solid and clay-looking, but if you turn to the wall behind you and give it a good push, your hand will go through it into the darkness.

You didn't notice this when you were at the top, since this pit is really fucking deep, but there's a big pile of wood at the bottom sorted into a cone supporting some kind of platform just above your line of sight. All the logs are sharpened, probably to kill any stragglers who managed to fall this far without dying. The pile of spikes and the platform look to be the only things worth investigating at the bottom of the pit.

You find some notches in the wood that allow you to climb up to the platform relatively unharmed. You thank your gloves for protecting you from some nasty splinters.

The top of the spike pile is flat and square, probably cut from a very large tree. Scattered across the platform is something that you can best describe as “human pulp.”

You know this is probably the most disgusting thing you've ever seen (and you've seen a lot of gross things today), but the mashed up people bits are so far removed from the actual human form that it surprisingly doesn't affect you very much. It's more like looking at a strawberry smoothie someone spilled, as opposed to a... person smoothie.

You wonder why all this gunk is here. It's kind of weird and too implausible to be some kind of memory-illusion, like the pit seems to be, so what is this mess...

Oh.

Oh, no, you shouldn't have spent all that time dicking around in Karkat's room. God damn your brown nosing. You're too late. He's become the cranberry sauce at Dave's mom's Thanksgiving dinners. You couldn't save him.

“Ugh!” you yell, stomping the platform. Something squishes under your sole. “Fuck. I'm so sorry Karkat. I'm sorry, I was too late.”

Another squish noise makes you look down at your boot. A nice, salmon colored piece of gunk is currently unsticking itself from your shoe. In fact, it looks like all of the slush is trying to congregate in one area. Lots of little chunks and pieces start to unstick themselves from the plaform and roll together and... Okay, you take it back, THIS is the grossest thing you've ever seen. You close your eyes and think about Bec running though a field of flowers to avoid triggering your gag reflex.

A particularly loud crunch makes you open your eyes and you see a half naked Karkat, decked out in full god mode, sitting crosslegged in front of you and cracking his back. He's got the short horns, the weird red eyes, threadbare pants, and about half a shirt on.

“Karkat, where's like, half your clothes?” Good going Jade, what a great first question to ask, after your one night stand just apparently reassembled himself.

“Sorry, Princess Prudeass. The flesh of cloth is way fucking harder to reassemble than the flesh of man.”

“That is... probably the most emo thing I've ever heard anyone say.” You smack your hand against your forehead. “Whatever! Karkat, I've come to get you. Let's get out of here.”

He looks up at you, confused. “Come to get me?” He frowns, looks down at his hands like he's disgusted. “Why?”

“What do you mean, 'why?'” Oh no, he's being self-deprecating, isn't he. “I went through a lot of shit to get here for you! I had to solve some kind of item puzzle with things from your closet!”

“You WHAT?” He glares at the rope around your waist, then the calculator, then the few remaining strands of beads around your neck. “What the shit did you do to my friend's necklace? That was like, her fifth favorite one. And, fuck, why the hell did you take Sollux's rotating mystery cylinder. He told me it's dangerous for smart people, which is why he gave it to me!”

“It's not a mystery cylinder, it's a calculator!”

“Nope, that's not right. That's not the right word at all.”

“Then what does it do?”

“Do I look like I fucking know?”

“Well-” you clench your fists. No time for banter! “Whatever, we should get out of here! C'mon, let's go!”

He's silent, looks up at you like a lost puppy. Ugh. He shakes his head. “You were right, Jade. You were totally, utterly, undeniably right and I am the lowliest fucking bottomfeeder for not realizing it sooner. I deserve all the shit that's coming to me, and I deserve to take it like a man buried three lawn rings under and being digested by parasitic creatures. I have committed terrible sins due to unbelievable laziness and absolute idiocy, Jade, and there aren't any priests left for me where I can go confess.” He looks down at the ground. “I have to say though, it is hilariously ironic I'm going to be ripped to shreds eternally in the last bastion of the afterlife that remains in these things'- no, these peoples'- memories. The place where they died.”

Well.

“Wait, ripped to shreds eternally?” you ask. “Haven't you already been ripped to shreds? Just now? Or did they forget you have,” you wiggle your hands in the air, “*magical powers*?” 

“No they haven't fucking forgotten. I was just taking a nice, pulpy, temporary afternoon resting time before recreating my hideous physical avatar you see before you and waiting for my divine justice once again.”

Oh shit, they're going to come back. You need to get Karkat out of here STAT.

You take his arm in order to heft him over your shoulder to carry him out, but he orders you to let him go, with that weird speaky power of his. You can't help but drop his hand as the command shakes through your whole body. Okay, that wont work.

“That's not going to work, Jade.” He closes his eyes like he's meditating, signifying he doesn't want to talk anymore.

“No shit.”

Okay, ignoring his subjects eternally and sacrificing people was pretty bad, but whipping himself about it like, thousands of years after the fact is going to help nothing. Absolutely nothing. You are 110 percent sure that Handsy McHandsHands wont give a shit he feels bad, they're going to chug on and keep punishing Karkat forever if they can. This whole situation frustrates the hell out of you, and you've just got to fix it. Gosh, you are such a fucking meddler. Anyway, you have to convince Karkat to leave with you.

“Karkat, what about me?”

His eyes slit open, a trail of red smoke wafting out towards you from the corner of his eye. “What about you?”

“I'm not going to leave without you. When that big group of hands starts rambling towards us... What if they go for me instead of you?”

“Fuck no, they like you, you're one of them. They might try to convince you to stay with them, but they're not going to hurt you.”

“Okay, so I'm one of them. Shouldn't you watch out for me then, maybe get your penance kick out of caring for the one sentient “follower” you have left?”

He opens his eyes fully, looking appalled. “Jade Harley, you are the most powerful being I have ever met. To try and 'care for you' would be the worst fucking insult I could ever lay on your person.”

Cute. “I mean, like, I need to die somehow right? If I'm immortal? I need you to do that when I get tired of living!”

“Come back here then. You've got the jar and my estranged spouse's justice rope, I won't be going anywhere.”

You've got one last, desperate thing to say to get him to leave with you. “We can go to a movie, any movie you want, if you come back with me? C'mon...” You extend a hand to him.

He looks like he's going to grab your hand, really looks like it, but closes his eyes again. “Sorry.”

God fucking dammit. You really want to yell 'YOU ARE A SHIT! A FUCKING SHIT!!!' but don't because that would probably make things worse. For everyone.

You think you still have some earplugs in your saddlebag from when you had to listen to Dave's snoring. Not all is lost, you'll have to go get those so you can pick up Karkat safely.

You turn around to climb down the notches, but stop mid-step because you hear something. A quiet, determined scraping. It crescendos in the back of your ear and rises up to a timbre worthy of only the most subtle of horror films. A hivemind of crawling zombies are heading straight for you and Karkat, and there's no time to get your earplugs.

They come through the imagined walls of the pit and phase through the star beads faster than you anticipate, swarming around the spiked platform and piling over it. They mob around you, headed for Karkat, taking care not to touch you too much. A few of them curiously pick at the rope around your waist, but the majority are piling onto Karkat.

You don't look at the pile, and instead turn around to focus on the end of your rope trailing off into the darkness behind you. Karkat only screams once, but it's loud.

They scuttle around you when they're done, more of them tugging on your rope when they pass by. As the majority of the group gets off the platform and down to the floor, quite a few of them are pulling curiously on your trail of breadcrumbs. Uh oh.

The few stragglers tugging on your rope slowly draw in the rest of the crowd. The majority, on the ground under the platform, are tugging in all different directions on the rope leading from your waist to the low part of the wall a few yards in front of you. They're careful not to pull in ways that make you stumble forward, but they're clearly trying to do something.

Are they going to try to snap the rope? Shit, you hope that justice is infallible. You put a hand down to your pistol and unhook the holster.

“Hey, stop it!” you yell. “Or I'll shoot, like, eight of you!” They don't seem to understand you, or are ignoring you. You watch the mobs of hands try to rip the rope apart. They tug, pull, and bend, but they can't seem to break it. Good.

Then they all stop, collectively. The lack of sound, the lack of shuffling of limb against limb against rope is incredibly startling. They're totally planning something. You take the gun out of the holster.

Then they start to pull. All of them. And from far away you hear the quiet sound of something dragging against the dirt.

Dammit. You raise your gun above your head and fire a warning shot, hoping they'll be sentient enough to realize you're dangerous. The echo of the shot bounces against the walls of the pit, and... they keep pulling.

You lower your gun down and aim for the middle of the crowd, and fire randomly into it. You hit the exposed forearm of some individual, and their hand tenses and removes itself from the rope. To your surprise, it leaves a trail of brown blood as it disappears into the rest of the mass. So they can bleed. The hand is replaced by another, and the group isn't affected at all.

You hear a thud-thud against something muffled and, fuck, they pulled it in here. You're screwed. Utterly and totally screwed.

It doesn't take long before they pull your baby through the darkness of the wall. It comes through on its side, leaning away from the group, and you would be worried about scratches if you weren't going to be fucking stuck here for the rest of forever. Fucking. Shit.

They stop pulling when it punctures their crowd. Their curiosity satisfied, or their malevolent plan fully completed, they scuttle away into the darkness. You wait until they've fully disappeared into the blackness before sinking to your knees.

What are you going to do. You turn around to the bloody mess behind you. Looks the same as it was before. “Karkat, how am I going to leave?” No response. You cannot believe he is being a self-absorbed buttface when you're starting to work yourself up into a panic right now!

You look wistfully at your CVO, hoping that maybe you could just kinda... drive out of here. But that's just dumb, there's no way you could drive out of some kind of alternate plane of reality. You look up at the top of the pit, perhaps that could be an exit? You could try for it. You need to put your motorcycle back on its feet though.

But no matter how much iron you can pump, you can't lift that baby upright by yourself. You need someone else to help you.

You turn back towards the stain that is Karkat. “Could you at least help me put my motorcycle back upright?”

No response. You are ready to blow the fuck up right about now.

“Dammit, Karkat! I am really trying to work with you here!!!!” You glare down an extra large glop of pink. “You need to get yourself out of that slump you've gotten yourself into and help me!!! Help me leave!!!”

Nothing happens, nothing changes.“You... FUCKING SHIT! I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!”

You can lift it by yourself with how much rage is powering through you right now! You jump off the platform and roll to the side, diffusing the force, and march to your motorcycle. Karkat is such a fucking douchebag!

You get on the side with your seat, bend at the knees, and lift with your core. Your abs are strong and angry! You can totally do this!!

And... It actually lifts? Wow, it's really light, actually. You push it upright onto its tires and it looks... perfect. Wow.

“You weren't actually trying to lift that gargantuan singular motor carriage by yourself, were you?”

You whip around. He's swinging his legs from the edge of the platform, looking really goddamn grumpy, like you just woke him up from a deep sleep. “Anyway, sorry about you getting stuck here. I feel bad about it, so I'm going to help you out. Using my” he wiggles his hands “*magic powers.*”

“Like I need your help!!! You butt!!!” you hold up your middle finger. You never do that. You are mad.

“Oh, come on now, I am literally doing the exact thing you want. You get to figure out how to leave, and I get to stay behind and rot for all eternity. Everything works out perfectly.” He slides cautiously off the platform, tripping over a spike sticking out.

“You are only allowed to help me out of here if you're coming with!!!”

He stops, like he's shocked you're so committed to this. Of course you are, you have to see things to the end! He cringes, scrunches his eyes up, like he's expecting a blow. “Alright. That is a really screwed up way to bargain, but I really don't want you stuck here with a very bloody and smashed me. So. Okay. Let's go. I can always sneak back in here when you aren't looking.”

You smile with relief. It's kind of a still-pretty-angry smile, but you can't help it! You probably look pretty scary. But he comes towards you anyway, getting within normal conversation distance.

Then you hear the shuffling again. Shit, already?

“Karkat! Get us out of here! Quick!”

“I...” He rubs his head. “I don't actually know how to leave. Well, *I* know how to leave, but I can't do it without severely and permanently injuring you. And trust me, you want none of that shit when you're immortal.”

“What???”

The mass gets here faster than before, circling around you, Karkat, and your CVO. 

“What do you mean, injured?”

“Draining all your blood to teleport you, even for a second, fucks up your brain like these new drugs all the kids are doing these days. And every other damn organ in your fleshy meat sack.” 

Shit. Karkat keeps on rambling as you both back up closer to your motorcycle. The hands swarm about you like they're circling their prey.

“We can figure this out though, I'm the god of fucking flesh and blood, I can create some more for you if need be... It might take an hour or two but... Uh... Listen, I really would like to wait at least a good five minutes before getting my ass handed to me again. Literally. So can we, like, drive?”

He doesn't need to ask twice. You grab your keys from your pocket with your right hand, and push Karkat hard with your left, so he flips over onto the passengers seat, his stomach landing flat on the cushion. He screams with surprise and you leap onto your trusty steed and push the key in the ignition with one very swift movement. The crowd around you shrieks and closes in, but your engine is started and you're feeling the vibrations and you're a fucking hurricane.

You gun it, straight through the crowd and right for the staircase. You crash through arms and limbs and a torso or two and you feel the slight bump of the shallow stairs and start heading up.

“Okay, Karkat,” you yell to a screaming Karkat, keeping your eyes on the rightwards curvature of the stairs. “I assume we have until the top of this staircase to think of a plan.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, what did you say? I can't hear you because my FACE IS FUCKING TWO NOTCHES AWAY FROM THIS BUZZSAW OF A WALL.”

You're surprised his voice is steady even with the very rapid bumps of the staircase. You risk a glance behind you. He's still hung over the passengers seat a little above you, his legs hanging off the side where the stairs drop off suddenly, and his face, indeed, two inches from the wall rapidly passing by. The group of hands has started to climb the stairs, their limbs extending and reaching along the sides of the wall in order to keep up with you. You're going as fast as you're able to, but they're catching up at a worryingly fast rate.

You focus on staying steady along the stairs. You're getting pretty high up, but there's still hundreds of feet to go. “Oh, just sit up. It's not like you can't heal yourself if anything bad happens.”

You hear a grunt and a scrape and feel the back of the motorcycle shift and he's up. “Thanks, glad you care,” he yells to you.

“You know I do.” Your voice and your chest vibrate with the fast bumps of the stairs beneath your wheels.

Even though the engine is loud, the sound of limbs shuffling against the clay staircase is overpowering it. “Karkat, how close are they?”

“Really close. You should speed it up another ten measurement sticks.”

You kick it up to 80, and the thudding under your wheels increases dramatically. You have to focus hard on keeping your baby turned to just the right angle. “Are you sure you can't use less blood or something? That teleport thing really seems like our best option!”

“I am undeniably positive, Jade! Do not doubt a god. The less things there are to teleport, the more blood they require. And we've only got me, you, and your motorcycle. That's a lot of stuff that needs to be sacrificed. Your vehicle can handle an empty tank of oil, but you as hell sure can't.”

“Wait... The more there are, the less blood it requires?” You glance behind you. They are really close, they're trying to grab the back of the wheel as it rushes forward, then drawing back as it burns their fingers. Karkat is looking at them with a grimace on his face. “So... What if we take all those guys with us? That would be enough to balance me out so I wouldn't have to lose all my fluids, right?”

“Are you shitting me right now? Then what would happen, once we got out? All these things stuck on the Earthly plane with nothing to do but piss and moan at me would probably be the worst thing ever. Ever.”

Uh. “I can just... Shove them back in the jar real quick? Or run them over with my motorcycle? They can die... for realsies, right?”

“I... think so?”

“Then let's do it!” You sneak a peak over the side of the staircase. You are awfully high up, you can't even see the platform anymore because it's so dark down there. You wonder how immortal you are, would you be able to be repaired if you fell?

“Jade, this is the dumbest plan ever. I hate you. I loathe you.” he pauses, taps your shoulder. “Also, I need a blood source from them. Like a cut or something. Just one little speck from some individual should do, I can get the rest out and calculate the chemical compound for the others based on that.”

“There's a gun on my thigh, use it!”

You feel him bury his face in your shoulder in order to reach your thigh, and he fumbles around with the strap for a bit before taking it out. “How do I... Use it?”

“Are you serious? Just aim and shoot! It's ready to fire.”

You feel him knee you in your back as he turns around fully, then you hear three shots in succession, then some cursing, then you hear the shuffling get louder. They sound really close, he better have hit them.

“Did you get them?”

“No, I can't use this damn thing! I can't hold it steady with these stupid ass stairs bouncing us around like some kind of teenager hyped up on coffee for the first time.” You glance behind you. They're literally right there, like, five feet away from the back of the bike. Still crawling forward, like some kind of human wave. How the shit did he miss. 

“That is... An awful metaphor to use in a critical situation.” You say it relatively quietly over the roar of the engine, so you can pretend you didn't mean for him to hear it. But you did. “It's not that hard.”

“Here, you do it, then.” You see the gun dangle in front of your face.

“Are you kidding me? I'm driving!”

“You're a strong woman. You can multi-task.”

“You're really, really asking me to do this?” you go cross-eyed to stare at the gun. Your motorcycle veers off the staircase a little, but you re-focus and give it a good jolt to the left real quick before any harm is done. “We might fall!”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

You make this unsatisfied groan that you hope Karkat can hear and slowly, slowly, remove your right hand from the handlebar, making sure the throttle doesn't return. You swivel a little on the stairs before getting your balance, and you grab the gun in one quick motion.

You try aiming it haphazardly behind you while still focusing on the stairs. You accidentally shoot Karkat in the chest instead. He shrieks and slaps your hand away. Your bike swerves to the edge and scrapes against air, but you yank it with one hand to the left, hard. “God fucking dammit, I trusted you! Et tu Jade.”

“Stop with the theatrics, you're fine! I can't see where I'm shooting!”

“Well, then turn around!”

“You are so dumb! I can't drive AND turn around AND shoot! That is way too many things and we will fall!”

“If you hit them, you won't need to worry about it, the effect is fucking immediate!”

Fine. Fuck it. You're immortal.

You twist to fully face them, knocking Karkat's head out of the way with your forearm, and as the front wheel of your bike tips off the edge, you shoot. You watch a splash of brown ooze up from the crowd, and Karkat turns to them and raises his hands as your bike's back wheel bumps against the edge of the stair. You start to tip down when Karkat's tattoos split open and something like lava shines through the thinned skin, and he yells something you can't hear over the engine.

You scream when you're fully disengaged from the platform and feel the well of gravity in your empty chest. Immediate your ass. This is the second time you've been thrown down this pit and it better be the last. Your bike starts to fall from beneath your thighs, so you clamp down as hard as you can and cling to Karkat's upper back. The bullet-hole is oozing on you. Ew.

“JUST DO IT ALREADY, KARKAT!”

He swirls his hands around as he tips into you from the now-vertical fall, and a great wave of really gross brown stuff comes waterfalling down above you. Your hair swirls behind your head and hits Karkat in the face when he turns towards you. He yells something at you.

“WHAT?”

He yanks you to his level by the hair, and its so shocking that you unclamp your legs from your bike and ow that really hurts! You almost stop screaming from the fall it's so shocking! He opens his mouth, really wide, really close to your face, and oh gosh he has bigger canines than even you, moves his head to your shoulder, and bites.

It goes through the fucking leather. You feel when it punctures your skin and breaks through into the tissue and veins underneath and everything goes red.

But it takes you a second to realize that everything isn't red from the pain, everything is really, actually red. And you feel slow and lazy, and your hair swims around you like you're underwater and gets in your eyes and you can't see anything.

Then you're standing on the grass in the middle of of a clearing, Texas trees surrounding you and Karkat doubled over and wheezing.

“Sorry,” he gasps out. “That took,” he coughs “a lot out of me.”

You rub your shoulder, it's a clean bite, but this is a good leather jacket! “Did you really have to bite me that hard?”

He doesn't answer, just looks up and points wearily at something behind you. You turn.

Aw, shit. You forgot about these guys. 

They're all furred up like a cat, frozen in one place due to the teleportation, but towering over you like a tsunami. And ready to crash any time. You'd better mow these fuckers down. You look around for your CVO. The rope which led from your waist to your bike is severed at the middle.

“Karkat... Where's my bike?”

He coughs up something brown then holds up a finger in a poorly executed 'ssshhh' gesture. “Three seconds... One, two--”

And it crashes into the grass to your right, dented up and battered from the long fall. Gas is leaking all over the ground and all of the glass is broken and the wheels are shreded to pieces. You shriek. Your baby is dead!

“You killed her!!!”

“Sorry!” he wheezes, continues in a whisper. “The oil wasn't accessible until the automotive container broke into pieces, and it's not like I can't fix the damn thing, I'm a god.”

“Do it now!!!” You point at it.

“Can't. Out of. Juice.” He falls face down on the grass. Flat as a board. The spaces between his tattoos are the color of sick tree bark. “Going to... take a good sleep now... Good luck with those guys.”

Shit, you hope that's only a temporary thing, and 'sleep' isn't code for death or something. You really hope Karkat's going to be okay. You've got to protect him. You face the mass of zombies again.

You can see through the gaps in fingers and arms that few of them are starting to move around in the center. Okay plan. You have to think of a plan.

You've got the jar. You start to unclip it from your jacket, then notice you still have a gun in your hand. Oh, yeah. You forgot about that. You can combine these things. Maybe.

You take the jar in one hand, and hold the gun up against it with the other, and hold it threateningly towards them. They should know what a gun does by now. They should get it, right?

About three fourths of them are worming around in the mass, but when you hold it up high, they stop moving, then whisper hisses at you. Okay, that's good. That means gun + jar = bad for hands. You're going to shoot the hell out of this.

You make sure your hand is out of the way, then pull the trigger. The clay doesn't give much resistance to the bullet at all, the jar turns to dust when it gets hit, all the intricate carving at the top disintegrating in a split second. The shirt that was clogging it flies off somewhere, taken by the bullet. The shot hurts your ears and the jar, but not much else. The mass doesn't change.

There's a jar-shaped gob of black ooze where the pot used to be in your hand. It hangs there for a moment, like it doesn't want to leave your palm, then drips off like normal water into the ground, trailing like a little stream towards the face-down Karkat. It pools around his face and goes up into his ears and then... the blackness is gone.

Uh. Okay. Not what you were expecting.

The mass screams, SCREAMS at you, and builds up to swarm you.

Oh no. The word Run fills your head and you take off in a sprint heading into the forest.

You bolt around trees, trying to slow them down, but it's not going to work for long. You sweat under your gloves and the calculator thing thwaps painfully against your thigh as you sprint as fast as you've ever gone since that one time you thought it would be cool to hang out with your dog in a wild wolf den.

You look for a tree, a big tree, anything you can climb up and buy you more time. You're not going to find any redwoods in Texas, you know, but you can at least get the height advantage on these guys.

They're really close, grabbing at your jacket, fingers barely sweeping the buckles, and you decide its now or never. You grab the branch of the tree nearest you, swing around it like a gymnast, and land on your feet on the branch just above the mass. The tree's not as tall as you would like, only a good twenty feet, but it's thick and can support you at the top.

You're so glad you're wearing leather gloves, otherwise your skin would be shred to bits. There's plenty of branches to grab and you rush up to the top. You look down when you're on the highest branch, and they're still piling on top of one another to try to reach you. You've got time to plan.

You think you have two shots left in this clip. That's not even enough to make a smidgen of a difference, especially since you're pretty much only aiming at hands. If you could headshot them... well, that would still make zero difference, but you'd feel better about it. You wish you had your rifle, or that they were divided up or something. You could pick a few off easier that way.

Divided up. You can do divisions... By two. You grab the calculator. You're really grasping at the straws of logic here. You have never grasped harder at smaller straws before in your life. But you're out of ideas and you're at the top of a fucking tree, and it's not like this stupid Moon Logic Puzzle thing hasn't worked before. It's time to get desperate.

Please, math god, whoever you are, please grant you some really oddly specific powers right now. Please let you divide up this big mass and make them significantly less dangerous.

You really hope that there's an even amount of individuals down there. Otherwise this won't work. Although you don't have much faith it's going to work even if there is an even amount. And you've probably got to guess the exact number of individuals that you want to divide. Considering the calculator goes up to 2^(22+1), your chances are really damn low.

You try setting the calculator to 64, which is 2^(5+1), first five discs slid into place. You realize it's kind of a dumb calculator, since you have to know the numbers of the previous iterations of two to calculate the last one. What's the point of that.

You double check your numbers as they cascade down, but it turns out 64 is way too low, as nothing happens. The tree shakes as the mass stacks itself like a raging ladder of people to get to you. You have to flail your arm around to get a good balance again.

You try 2048, nothing happens. The leaves are rustling like crazy. They're about halfway up to you. 

262144 takes a long time to set, and they're almost here. Hands grab and pull at the branches just under you, twigs and weak sicks breaking under their grips.

You scream in frustration and just set all the discs to repeating digits of two, 2^(22+1). You miss one at the beginning though, making it 2^(21+1)-2. Shit, you can't believe you made an error. Relevant to your impending doom or not, mathematical errors suck ass! You stare angrily at the calculator, trying to will it to work the way you want. The group stretches to almost your height, a few solitary hands starting to grab for your head.

As the notches light up in a skull pattern, you realize this isn't a calculator at all. It's a puzzle. An image-based math puzzle. That you accidentally solved. 

The mass freezes up, a few grasping fingers just in front of your face. Oh gosh. Whew. The puzzle starts to make this low pitched rumble, kind of sickly and whispering. All the leaves on the tree you're in curl up and die in seconds, falling off the branches. It's getting very, very cold. Instant frostbite cold. You should probably get this out of your hands. 

You lift it up to stick it into one of the hands suspended inches above your forehead. The sound gets louder, and just as you manage to hang it on the thumb of an open palm, the puzzle starts to hum with ancient mechanics.

It cascades out from the center, making clunking noises from ceramic parts rubbing together rapidly. The discs fold into each other like an accordion, and get shoved together on the part of the cylinder facing you. You suppose it's opening up on the other side, you apparently shoved it in to the hand front-first. You wonder what it looks like on the inside, but you aren't quite curious enough to turn it around to face you. Curiosity killed the Jade, after all... Or something like that.

The mass starts to flake apart, like dry skin. Peeling, transparent chunks fleck off of the group, starting from the outside, and gently float to the ground where they disappear in a black puff. The rate of decay picks up the longer you watch, and you pay close attention to the individuals you see as the layers start to peel away.

There are... quite a lot of people in this rat king of a group. Torsos contorted to fit in a very small space, legs knotted together, faces merged to a neighbor's, and all of them frozen with a bitter, unthinking anger. You hope your afterlife, if there is one, goes much better then all of these peoples'.

You watch until the last hand, holding the puzzle, turns to dust. The puzzle hangs in mid air for a second, taking time to close up with some very tired sounding mechanical noises, and the glow of the skull goes dark.

It cracks right down the middle.

You watch it fall to the ground, breaking a few barren twigs on the way, and listen to the satisfying thud it makes against the dirt. You sit down on your branch, your back against the tree, close your eyes, and fully exhale. Feels real good.


	8. How You Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Afterlife

After breaking into the vending machine which wouldn't take your quarters in the basement of Karkat's apartment building, you managed to grab some just barely expired orange juice and granola bars and are now currently shoving them in his mouth by the dim light of the mostly-set sun. He's sitting up half-naked against your battered motorcycle and big gooby anime tears are falling from his now-normal eyes. You're crouched down to his right, half a Chewy bar in your right hand and your left hand on his shoulder, trying to keep him up against your bike. What has your life become.

“I can't believe,” he sobs loudly, as a chunk of Quaker's finest granola falls out of his mouth. “I can't fucking believe someone as good and perfect as you is helping me.”

“Don't talk. Chew. Blood sugar. Important. You must fix. Motorcycle.” you say. He tries to reach for the orange juice, kind of flapping his arm around while making a low whining noise with his eyes closed. “Karkat, that is the least effective way to get me to pass you the orange juice.”

“Fuck you...” he whispers, choking back tears, while attempting to raise his middle finger. “You're such a...” it looks like he's going to say 'fuckass,' you can see the word forming on his lips- “beautiful, perfect being.” Another big slew of tears rain forth from his eyes. Wow. 

“All these compliments are kind of freaking me out.” You put the bottle of OJ in his hand. “C'mon, Karkat! Swear at me!”

“You're... you're fucking... great... Jade.” He lifts up the bottle and takes a swig of pure sugar and Vitamin C. Okay, he can pick that up by himself now, he's getting better. “You've done way too much, more than anyone should do for a spiritually broken piece of ass with disgustingly warped morals.”

You take the orange juice back from him. “Is that you? I'm confused. What did that mean?”

He opens his eyes fully, stops crying. “Fuck low blood pressure, sugar, and all that smooth jazz. I can't think straight with English right now.” He shakes his head a little, tries to get a bit more energy. “I'm way too weak to speak in sharp words and Latin slang. So I'll say this to you the way I want.”

Oh man, he's really out of it. At least he's not crying anymore. “Say what?” Maybe you should take him to the doctor? No, no that would probably be a bad idea.

He lifts his arm up to touch the hand you have on his shoulder. He grabs it with a surprising amount of firmness, then brings it close to his face. He looks at you with these big doe eyes, shining with tears. Euughh.

Then he starts to speak. His voice is quiet, oddly melodic and raspy, but you can hear him as clear as day. It takes away all the awkwardness of his face and you don't observe anymore, you listen. He announces his intention first: a pledge to you-- a covenant, a bargain that you've already paid your half of. He states your precious soul has done far more for him than he deserves, far more than he can ever pay back in lifetimes, but he will do all he can to pay his debt. He says you have gone to hell for him, and if you so will it, he will follow you to the ends of the earth in return. He is utterly and perfectly yours.

Silence hangs in the air, his face looks more serious, like he really meant it.

“Karkat... That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard.” Oops did you say that out loud. Whatever. “I get that you're thankful, but that's kind overdoing it!”

He grins. Wide. “Too fucking late, Jade. We shook on it.”

“What???” you look at your hand clutched in Karkat's. “That doesn't count! You can't stop me from driving off into the sunset alone as a strong independent woman because of a lame handshake!”

“Oh, you can drive off alone,” Karkat says. He's clearly feeling a lot better after the talk-at-you stint. “But it doesn't matter...” he touches his chest. “Because our hearts will always be together.”

Ha. Hahahahaha. Your cheeks are puffing out with the force of laughter, ready to explode at any time. That's the worst thing you have ever heard in your whole life! Wow! It escapes from your lips and you double over with a serious case of the guffaws. Haha, you're laughing so hard! Your lungs are starting to hurt!

“I understand my innate grasp of humor is sometimes overpowering,” he says, “but I didn't think you were going to explode like some kind of burning sack of laughter left at the neighbors doorstep.”

You wipe a tear from your eye.“You're funny, Karkat!”

“You fucking know it. I'm actually, secretly, the god of humor and bizarre tattooidge.”

The sun has set and only the dimmest glow makes it into the clearing where you are, and the air is getting chilly with nighttime temperature. “Ready to fix my bike yet?”

“No.”

“Goddammit Karkat, it's getting cold. We can't just leave it here and go inside!”

He shrugs, lifting his arms off the ground with great effort. “I'm warm.”

Fine, be that way. You plop your butt on his lap. He makes this noise like you squeezed all the air out of him. You look right into his eyes and say, “Watch out for the heat leech! She's coming for you!” He only raises an eyebrow.

You cozy up to him, sticking your face in the crook of his shoulder and wrapping your arms tight around his waist. He is warm! He's like a snuggly heat blanket!

He rests an arm on your shoulder, kind of awkwardly, like he's at the end of a yawn-and-stretch.

“Jade, do you remember my name?”

“Uhhh, it's Karkat. I literally said it like two seconds ago.”

“No. Fuck. I can't believe you haven't picked up on my vaguely mystical linguistic cues. I mean, my real ass name. My really real name.”

“Oh, right, that.” You recall him saying earlier today you pronounced it correctly last night. Hmmm. “Nope, can't recall.”

“I'll forgive you, but only this once.” He shifts a little bit, bumping your head gently and making you sit up a little more to look at him. “I'll say it for you, here. It's---”

He says it for you. Oh, of course that's his name. You can't believe you forgot it. It's so very him, all angry and soft and balled up in simple syllables.

“Now you try it,” he says.

“Okay...” you clear your throat. He looks at you intently. “Ummm... gggGGGGJJjjhhhKhroAAAA”

He just makes this face like you fed him a big spoonful of pickled ginger. “Wow, that has to be like, the opposite of what I just said. Wow.”

“Shut up! I was drunk. That probably gave me language powers or something.”

“Okay, we can work through this. The first part isn't a glottal stop like you were so eloquently performing, it's a uvular ejective, which you've got to follow up with a lowered frequency bilabial fricative.”

You're smart, you know you're smart, but you didn't get a single word of what he was trying to get you to do. You probably look pretty lost because he sighs and raises his hand to your throat. “Here, just start with making a clicking sound towards the back of your tongue.”

He presses in gently with his thumb and pointer finger at the edge of your jaw, and you start to try to say the first sound of Karkat's name. It takes you a few tries, but following Karkat's directions on where to move the sound based on what he feels from your throat, you manage to get it.

“Sweet fucking tits, good job Jade. Let's move on to actually getting the correct tone along wi-”

“Karkat, you still haven't told me what you said to me last night.”

He looks all surprised, eyes widened and embarrassed, and he drops his hand from your neck. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip.

“C'mon,” you say, tapping his shoulder impatiently. “Tell me what you said to me to get my engines all revved up!”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.” You are really curious. You have to know!

He looks away, turning all red. “I'm not... I, well, I'm a little weak right now. But it's not like I can't... tell you later, right?”

What does he mean 'tell you later,' you are really friggin curious right now! It's not like he's going to rehash it word-for-wo- ohhhhhhh. Ohhhhhhhhh. 

Tell you later. That means he's planning on coming along with you when you go back home. Or maybe he's assuming you'll stay in Texas for a while, at least long enough to get some boning in. You hope it's the former, you don't want to stay in Texas too much longer.

So that means it's decision time: Do you want to ride off into the night alone, brandishing a big middle finger at the guy who made you go through all this shit and ate your heart, never seeing him again until the end? Or do you want to keep him around, someone to keep your life entertaining, a friend on the back of your bike when you take your Jade Harley-brand road-trips?

The answer, in the long run, will probably be somewhere between those two. For right now, though, you'll stick with the latter option. What's life without someone cursing at you every six minutes? Not a good one, that's for sure.

Besides, dude's got skills in the sheets.

“Yes. Tell me later. In detail! But, you should tell me soon though... Otherwise,” you make a fake 'fainting' pose. “I might just get a case of the feminine hysterics if you don't satisfy my curiosity!” 

“Wouldn't that be the shits?”

“It would!”

He slings his arms over your shoulders, manages to put a bit more strength into it so he can hold his arms up by grabbing the back of your jacket. “Hey, Jade. I've got a question for you.”

“What is it?”

“Now, feel free to turn me down, which I totally expect you will since I am an insignificant bug beneath your gaze, but would you mind if I... tagged along with you? For a while?”

You let silence hang in the air for a bit, just to freak him out. It does, he keeps rambling.

“I mean, I can finally leave now, without worrying about carting that fragile piece of shit pot around, and I've finally got a reason to do so-- I found... somebody my cold, icy heart doesn't mind melting for.” He pauses, thinks a little. “I found someone I'd like to get to know more.”

Awwww! That is too precious! You can't say no now! “Of course, Karkat! You can definitely come along with me! We can hang out at my place for a bit and watch movies and have all sorts of adventures!”

Karkat gives you a big hug, or as big a hug as he can muster, clinging to your jacket and burying his face in your shoulder. He's so warm, and cute, and you don't mind hugging him back at all.

“I think... I'd like to get to know you better too,” you whisper. And it's true. “... As soon as you fix my motorcycle.”

He backs up to look at your face with the most cringe-y expression you have ever seen. “God FUCKING dammit Jade, we were having a moment. You literally just shat on all my favorite romance movies with one single sentence. I can't believe you.”

He waits for you to apologize.

You kiss him right on the lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DVD extras!
> 
> Tumblr announcement post art:[here](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/post/66542335354/the-last-two-chapters-of-jade-harley-and-the-rise)  
> Bonus sexquel: [WARNING CONTAINS NSFW IMAGE](http://oxfordroulette.dreamwidth.org/3891.html). Considering my last sex scene was a fucking masterpiece where Jane Crocker came in half-and-half, you probably shouldn't expect too much.  
> Post-adventure bonus fanart: [I dunno they're in some kind of cursed temple use your imagination](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/post/77332288186/jadekat-week-day-5-supernatural-i-cant-believe)  
> Some AU I made for a short fanfic where Jade's the god: [Watch out, bad AU of an AU alert](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/post/100125605267/jadekat-always-and-forever-u)
> 
>  **FANWORK GALLERY:**  
> [Jade Harley and the Rise of the Underworld book cover](http://paradoxsister.tumblr.com/post/132867004252/a-book-cover-inspired-to-jade-harley-and-the-rise)  
> [Fanart (jadekat on motorcycles!)](https://artaline.tumblr.com/post/161906839713/i-like-it-heavy-i-finally-started)  
>  (psst: if you write or draw anything, I'd love to see it! Drop me a link and I'll put your fanwork here)
> 
> Stay tuned to find out what antics Dave was up to this whole time in the next part of the series, coming to theaters this winter. (Hint: he was moping about Jade while crying and eating ice cream)  
> Hope you like patron shipping.


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